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THE 



WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1692 



V 

BY GOV. THOMAS HUTCHINSON 



From an Unpublished Manuscript (an early Draft of his History of 
Massachusetts) in the Massachusetts Archives 



WITH NOTES BY 

WILLIAM FREDERICK POOLE 



BOSTON 
PRIVATELY PRINTED 

1870 






[Reprinted from the New-England Historical and Genealogical Register for October, 1870.] 



David Clapp & Son, Printers, Boston. 






?<* 



THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1692. 



Introduction. 

In May last I had occasion to consult the original manuscript of Gov. 
Hutchinson's second volume of the History of Massachusetts, which, it is 
well known, is among the Hutchinson papers in the State archives in Boston. 
I had never before seen the manuscript, and did not readily find the pas- 
sage of which I was in search. The first portion of the manuscript seemed 
to be missing, and its place was supplied by matter which belonged to the 
Appendix. My first inpression was that the missing sheets were those which 
Gov. Hutchinson did not recover after the stamp-act riot of 1765. Finding 
the matter of the Appendix out of place, suggested that the volume might 
have been carelessly arranged for binding. On collating the manuscript the 
early portion was found in another part of the volume. This was the copy 
used by the printers. 

In my search I came to sheets which contained the subject matter of the 
printed text, but expressed in different language. I saw, on a closer exami- 
nation, that this was an earlier draft, and the identical manuscript which had 
passed the ordeal of the riot of 17G5 ; for portions of it were much defaced, 
and bore the marks of being trampled in the mud. The copy from which 
the volume was printed was evidently prepared at a later date. For the 
convenience of those who may hereafter consult this manuscript, I made in 
folio 7 (following the matter of the Appendix), the following memoranda : — 

" There has been an error in binding this manuscript. The matter which 
precedes this is Appendix No. 1 (printed pp. 449-481, edition 17G7, and 
pp. 404-423, edition 1795. The first portion of the history proper, ending 
with manuscript page 28 (to printed p. 40, edition 1767, and p. 43, edition 
1795), has been placed in folios 92-100. Page 29 is opposite. This is the 
manuscript from which the second volume was printed. 

" In folio 55 is the beginning of another manuscript, an earlier draft, from 
which the author prepared the narrative which appears in the printed vol- 
1* 



| WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1692. 

iinio. The earlier draft, ending in folio 91, carries the substance of the nar- 
rative to the word " Boston," on p. 313, edition of 1767, and p. 284, edition 
of L795. 

" 'These memoranda were made May 17, 1870 (with the approval of Mr. 
Secretary Warner), at which time the earlier draft was first identified." 

[Signed.] 

Both manuscripts are wholly in the autograph of Gov. Hutchinson, and 
they seem to be prepared with equal care. In form of expression and 
phraseology they are quite unlike. Incidents and opinions contained in the 
earlier draft are changed, abridged and sometimes omitted in the later draft. 
In matters of fact the earlier draft is often more precise and accurate than 
the printed text, for the author doubtless prepared it with the original 
authorities before him. 

The researches of Gov. Hutchinson into the early annals of Massachu- 
setts are of the highest historical value. He had opportunities of access to 
original papers such as no person now possesses. He had the tastes, the 
capacity for close application and research, the judicial understanding and 
the freedom from prejudice and partizanship which characterize the genuine 
historian. His style, if not always elegant, is clear and simple, and singu- 
larly free from that sensational and rhetorical method of statement which is 
the bane of much of the historical writing of the present day. 

Each of the several editions of Gov. Hutchinson's History of Massachu- 
setts has become rare, and a new and revised edition will soon be demanded. 
In the preparation of that work the earlier draft of the second volume, 
which has now come to light, will furnish important materials. For the 
purpose of exhibiting the character and value of this manuscript, and for 
contributing some additional information upon a special subject, I have ex- 
tracted for publication that portion which treats the " Witchcraft Delusion 
of 1692." 

So far as a presentation of facts is concerned, no account of that dread- 
ful tragedy has appeared which is more accurate and truthful than Gov. 
Hutchinson's narrative. His theory on the subject — that it was wholly the 
result of fraud and deception on the part of the " afflicted children " — will not 
be generally accepted at the present day, and his reasoning on this point 
will not be deemed conclusive. That there were fraud and deception attending 
it, no one will doubt ; but there is now a tendency to trace an analogy be- 
tween the phenomena then exhibited, and modern spiritual manifestations. 
No man of any reputation who lived in that generation, and saw what trans- 
pired at Salem Village and its vicinity, doubted that there was some in- 
fluence then exerted which could not be explained by the known laws of 
matter or of mind. As these men left the stage, the theory of fraud was 
gradually accepted by their descendants ; and at the period when Gov. 
Hutchinson wrote, it was well nigh the universal belief among the educated 
classes. 



WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 5 

For the information of persons interested in tracing the resemblance be- 
tween the abnormal manifestations of our time and those of the seventeenth 
century, I have appended notes to the other cases mentioned by Gov. Hutch- 
inson, which may lead such inquirers to a further knowledge of their psycho- 
logical phenomena. 

The author's notes are indicated by stars, &c, and are signed 11. The 
editor's notes are indicated by numerals, and are signed p. w. f. p. 



On [mutilated] 1 May, at a general council, there was an appointment of 
sheriffs, justices and other civil officers, and, among the rest, Commissioners 
of Oyer and Terminer for the trial of witches. Upon this occasion the 
Governor suffered the council to choose the officers, and he gave or refused 
his consent to the choice — a mistake which no other governor has made, and 
which was giving up a right derived to him from the charter, the great dif- 
ference between a nomination and assent being very obvious. 

The old constitution being dissolved, it was absolutely necessary an As- 
sembly should be called. What was the rule of law in the meantime might 
be made a question ; but at the first meeting of the General Assembly (the 
8th of June) an act passed that all the laws of the Colony of Massachusetts 
Bay and the Colony of New-Plymouth, not being repugnant to the laws of 
England, nor inconsistent with the charter, should be in force to the 10th of 
November, 1G92, in the respective colonics, except where other provisions 
should be made by acts of assembly; and all justices of the peace had 
the same power given them in the execution of laws which magistrates 
used to have. No other acts were passed except two or three relative to 
the revenue ; an act for erecting a naval office ; another to enable the Gov- 
ernor, with the advice of the council, for six months to come, to raise and 
transport, or march the militia into either of the governments of Rhode 
Island, Connecticut, Narragansett or New- York ; and another act for estab- 
lishing a court of sessions of the peace, and inferior court of common pleas. 
The assembly was adjourned on the second of July to the second "Wednes- 
day in October. 

The confusion occasioned by the supposed witchcraft seems to have been the 
reason why nothing more was done towards a body of laws better adapted 
to the new constitution ; for on the 2d of June the commissioners held their 
special court at Salem. 

1 The council met on the 16th, 17th, 20th, 24th and 27th of May, 1692. On the 27th the 
appointments named (of sixty-seven justices, eight sheriffs, and two coroners) were made. 
The twenty-eight councillors were also authorized to act as justices in their own localities. 
This injury to the manuscript was occasioned by its being thrown into the street during the 
stamp-act riot on the evening of August 26, 1765, when Gov. Hutchinson's house was sacked. 
In his subsequent draft, as the date was missing, he did not supply it, but said " At the 
first general council," &c. This paragraph commences on page 8 of the manuscript, p. 



6 WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 

Before I relate their proceedings, I will collect, as far as I am able, the 
several instances of what was called Witchcraft, from the beginning of the 
country. 

It is natural to suppose that the country, at the first entrance of the Eu- 
ropeans into it, afforded the most suitable scene, especially as a notion pre- 
vailed that the savages all worshipped the Devil ; but I find no mention of 
witchcraft for the first twelve or fifteen years. About the year 1645, 2 seve- 
ral people in Springfield, upon Connecticut River, were suspected of witch- 
craft, and a greater number were supposed to be bewitched ; among the rest 
two of the minister's children/* Great pains were taken to prove the facts 
upon the suspected persons; and about the year 1650, a poor wretch, Mary 
Oliver, 3 no doubt weary of her life, after long examination, was brought to 
confession. It does not appear that she was executed. 

2 The date named for the beginning of the Springfield troubles is probably three or four 
years too early. Gov. Hutchinson relied for the date of what he supposed to be the earliest 
witch case in the Massachusetts Colony, on Johnson's Wonder Working Providence, p. 
199, where the date 1645 stands at the head of the page. As I have explained in my re- 
print of Johnson (pp. xiii.-xv.), these headings are unreliable, and, quite likely, were as often 
inserted by the printer as by the author. The date in the heading may be true as to some 
incident recorded on the page and erroneous as to other incidents. Keeping in mind the 
date when the work was written — from 1649 to 1651— the statement in the text involves no 
error. This portion was written in 1651. The author says, " There hath of late been more 
" than one or two in this town [Springfield] greatly suspected of witchcraft; yet have they 
" used much dilligence, both in finding them out, and for the Lords assisting "them against 
" their witchery, yet have they, as is supposed, bewitched not a few persons, among whom 
" two of the reverend Elders children." The cases came to examination and trial the same 
year the narrative was written, 1651, and the testimony offered covers the two previous 
years. p. 

* Johnson. h. 

3 The name of this woman was not Mary Oliver, but Mary Parsons. She was tried 
in Boston, May 13, 1651, on the charge of witchcraft and for murdering her own child. She 
was convicted on the latter charge on her own confession, and sentenced to be hanged. 
She was reprieved till May 29 (Mass. Rec. iv. p. i. p. 47). In Judd's History of Hadley (p. 
234), it appears that Mary Parsons was again tried for witchcraft in 1661, and discharged. 
This is doubtless an error in copying or printing 1661 for 1651, when the trial already named 
took place ; for in both instances she was charged with bewitching the children of Mr. 
Moxon the minister. Mr. Moxon. returned to England in 1652. 

Hugh Parsons, her husband, had previously been tried and convicted of witchcraft; and 
the most damaging charges against him had been brought by his wife. Among these were 
the following :— 1. Mrs. P. had an intimate friend Mrs.^Smith, to whom she freely express- 
ed her mind. Now Mrs. Smith was a person Avho went little abroad, and Mrs. P. was sure 
she would not speak of the secrets committed to her trust ; and yet her husband knew all 
about their conversation. 2. He would be out late nights ; and half an hour before he came 
home, she would hear strange noises about the house. 3. He would come home in a dis- 
tempered mind, put out the fire, pull off the bed clothes, aud throw peas about the house. 
.4. He would gabble in his sleep, have strange dreams, and say he had been fighting the 
Devil. The jury found him guilty. The magistrates set aside the verdict, and the case 
came before the General Court at Boston, May 31, 1652, when he was aquitted ( Ibid. p. 96). 
The numerous and very curious depositions in the Springfield cases may be seen in the Ap- 
pendix of Drake's Annals of Witchcraft, 1869, pp. 219-258. Hutchinson (in note, vol. i. p. 
165) mentions the case of Hugh Parsons, but not that of his wife. He mentions it again 
(vol. ii. p. 22), and does not seem to be aware that his Mary Oliver case was that of Par- 
sons's wife. My references to Hutchinson are to the edition of 1795. r. 



WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 7 

Whilst this inquiry was making, Margaret Jones* was executed at 
Charlestown. 4 Mention is made by Mr. Hale, of a woman at Dorchester, 5 

* Vol. i. p. 150. [Hutchinson's references to his earlier vol. are to the ed. of 1761.] h. 

4 Margaret Jones was executed June 4, 1648, and was therefore by more than two years, 
so far as now appears, the first case of conviction and execution for witchcraft in the Mas- 
sachusetts Colony. The case is reported in Winthrop's Journal, ii. p. 326, and Hale's 
Modest Inquiry concerning Witchcraft, p. 17. Mr. Hale relates incidents not recorded by 
Winthrop. On the day of her execution, he, then twelve years of -age, went to her cell, 
" in company with some neighbors who took great pains to bring her to confession and re- 
" pentance; but she constantly professed herself innocent of that crime." p. 

5 No writer on this subject seems hitherto to have given the name of the person who suf- 
fered at Dorchester. Mr. John Hale, in Modest Inquiry, 1697, p. 17, thus alludes to the 
matter: " Another that suffered on that account sometime after was a Dorchester woman. 
" And upon the day of her execution Mr. Thompson [Wm. Tompson], minister of Bran- 
" try and J. P. her former minister took pains with her to bring her to repentance. And 
" she utterly denyed her guilt of witchcraft, for she had when a single woman played the 
" harlot, and being with child, used means to destroy the fruit of her body to conceal her sin 
" and shame; and although she did not effect it, yet she was a murderer in the sight of 
" God for her endeavors, and shewed great penitency for that sin; but owned nothing of 
" the crime laid to her charge." Mr. Drake in his Annals of Withcraft, and the History of 
Dorchester, make no mention of this case. 

I think I have found a clue to the name of this Dorchester woman. Increase Mather, in his 
Remarkable Providences, 1684, gave some of the cases of witchcraft which had occurred in 
New-England. He sent a copy of this book to his brother Nathaniel, a minister in Dublin. 
In a letter, dated Dec. 31, 1684, Nathaniel Mather acknowledged the receipt of the book, 
and says : " Why did you not put in the story of Mrs. Hibbins witchcrafts and the dis- 
" covcry thereof; and also of H.Lake's wife, of Dorchester, whom as I have heard the Devil 
" drew in by appearing to her in the likeness, and acting the part of a child of hers then 
" lately dead on whom her heart was much set ; as also another of a girl in Connecticut, 
" who was judged to die a real convert, though she died for the same crime ? — stories, as I 
" have heard them as remarkable "for some circumstances as most I have read." (Mather 
Papers, Mass. Hist. Coll., voj. xxxviii. p. 58.) Mr. Mather probably heard these stories 
before he went abroad. The precise date of his departure does not appear. It was, how- 
ever, before March 23, 1650-51, when he writes from London. There was a Henry Lake 
residing in Dorchester in 1678, who, with his children, was named as the residuary legatees 
in the will of Thomas Lake, a prominent citizen of the town, who died Oct. 27, 1678 (His- 
tory of Dorchester, p. 125). Mr. Savage (Geneal. Diet.) says there was a Henry Lake, 
currier, in Salem, in 1649, " who may have been the Henry Lake of Dorchester "; but he 
makes no mention of his wife being executed for witchcraft. 

The details of the case as related by Mr. Mather are quite unlike those related by Mr. 
Hale. One or both of the statements must be incorrect. The error I think must be in that 
of Mr. Hale. Mr. Mather was a resident of Dorchester, and a graduate of the college in 
1647. He gives the name of the person accused, and was so situated as to be familiar with 
all the incidents. Mr. Hale was a resident of Charlestown, and in 1650 was but fourteen 
years of age. He did not know the name of the person, and gives the same incidents to a 
Springfield case. He says, p. 19 : " There was another executed of Boston anno 1656 [Mrs. 
" Hibbins] for that crime ; and two or three of Springfield, one of which confessed, and said 
*' the occasion of her familiarity with Satan was this : She had lost a child, and wasexceed- 
" ingly discontented at it, and longed Oh that she might see her child again! And at last 
" the Devil in likeness of her child came to her bed-side and talked with her, and asked to 
" come into the bed to her that night and several nights after, and so entered into cove- 
" nant with Satan and became a witch. This was the only confessor in those times in this 
" government." If any person, other than Mary Parsons, was executed at Springfield for 
witchcraft, no details have come down to us. Increase Mather probably omitted to mention 
the cases of Mrs. Hibbins and Mrs. Lake, with which he must have been familiar, in defer- 
ence to the feelings of their friends then living. p. 

9 



8 WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 

and another at Cambridge 6 about the same time, all denying what they were 
charged with, at their death ; and soon after Mrs. Hibbins* 7 the magistrate's 
widow, was executed at Boston. In 1662, at Hartford, about 30 miles be- 
low Springfield, upon the same Connecticut River, one Ann Cole, whose 
father is said to have been a godly man who lived next door to a Dutch 
family, was supposed to be possessed by a Demon who sometimes spake 
Dutch and sometimes English, and sometimes an unintelligible language, the 
demons speaking in her things unknown to herself, and holding a conference, 
&c. Several ministers who were present took the conference in writing 
with the names of the persons mentioned as actors ; and, among the rest, of 
a woman in prison upon suspicion, [one] Greensmith. Upon examination she 
confessed also, and appeared to be astonished at the discovery, and owned 
that she and the rest had been familiar with a demon who had carnal knowl- 
edge of her, and though she had not made a formal covenant with him, 
vet she had promised always to be ready at his call, and was to have had a 
high frolick at Christmas, and then the agreement was to be signed. The 
woman upon this confession was executed-! 8 Goffe, the Regicide, says in 
his diary, January 20, '62, that three witches were condemned at Hartford ; 
and afterwards, Feb. 24, that the maids were well after one of the witches was 

6 This was the case of Mrs. Kendal, of Cambridge, who was executed for bewitching to 
death a child of Goodman Genings, of Watertown. The principal evidence was that of a 
Watertown nurse, who testified that the said Kendal did make much of the child, and then 
the child was well, but quickly changed in color and died a few hours after. The court took 
this evidence without calling the parents of the child. After the execution the parents 
denied that their child was bewitched, and stated that it died from imprudent exposure to 
cold by the nurse the night before. The nurse soon after was put in prison for adultery, 
and there died, and so the matter was not further inquired into. Hale's Modest Inquiry p. 
18. 

Rev. Lucius R. Paige, of Cambridgeport, has recently found in the Middlesex court re- 
cords, 1660, another alleged case of witchcraft in Cambridge, which was tried that year. 
Winifred Holman, an aged widow, was accused by her neighbors, John Gibson and Vile, 
their son John Gibson, Jr., and their daughter Rebecca, wife of Charles Stearns. Actions 
of defamation were commenced against these parties, and on the trial, the}-, by way of 
justification, presented their supposed proofs of witchcraft, some details of which "may be 
seen in Hist, and Geneal. Register, vol. xxiv. p. 59. Probably other cases were tried in the 
courts of that period, of which nothing is now known. John Dunton, in 1683, said there 
had been twenty cases of witchcraft recently tried in the colony. {Letters, p. 72.) p. 

* Vol. i. p. 187. h. 

7 See Mass. Rec, vol. iv. pt. 1, p. 269. Joshua Scottow's representation, dated March 7, 
1655-6, that he did not intend to oppose the proceedings of the court in the case of Ann 
Hibbins, is in Mass. Archives, vol. cxxxv. fol. 1. She was executed June 19, 1656. p. 

t Magnalia. h. 

s The case of Ann Cole was fully reported in a letter by Mr. John Whiting, minister at 
Hartford, under whose observation it occurred, to Increase Mather, dated Dec. 10, 1682. 
The document is one of the Mather Papers, and is printed in Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., vol. 
xxxviii. pp. 466-469. An abstract of the case is in Increase Mather's Remarkable Providences, 
chap. v. pp. 96-99, London ed. 1856, and Cotton Mather"s Magnalia, Hartford ed. 1855, vol. 
ii. p. 448. Several of the incidents are not correctly stated by Hutchinson, either in the 
manuscript or printed text. Ann Cole did not live next door to a Dutch family. The name 
of the woman execute!, Greensmith, appears in both abstracts by the Mathers, but not in 
Mr. Whiting's original statement. The woman and her husband were both executed, p. 



WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 9 

hanged. In 1669, Susanna Martin, of Salisbury,* was bound over to the 
Superior court upon suspicion of witchcraft, but discharged without trial. 9 

Another ventriloqua, Elizabeth Knap, 10 at Groton, in 1671, much as Ann 
Cole had done at Hartford, alarmed the people there. Her demon was not 
so cunning. He railed at the godly minister of the town, and at the same 
time uttered many blasphemous expressions ; and then charged all her afflic- 
tions upon a good woman in the neighborhood. The woman had better 
fortune than perhaps as good an one had at Salem some years after.* The 
people would not believe the Devil, and Elizabeth confessed that she had 
been deluded, and that it was the Devil himself who tormented her in the 
shape of good persons. In 1673, Eunice Cole, 11 of Hampton, was tried, 
and the jury found her not legally guilty ; but that there were strong grounds 
to suspect her of familiarity with the Devil. 

In 1679, the house of William Morse, 12 of Newbury, was troubled with 
throwing bricks, stones and sticks, and playing so many pranks that he that 
believes the story told by Glanvil of the devils at Tedworth cannot avoid 
giving credit to this. It is worth observing that none of the family, except 
one boy, were afflicted. He was tossed about from one side of the room to 

9 This woman was one of the victims hanged for witchcraft at Salem, in 1G92. The evi- 
dence offered at her examination is in Mather's Wonders, pp. 70-76 ; Calef's More Won- 
ders, pp. 125-132, and Woodward's Records of Salem Witchcraft, vol. i. pp. 193-233. She 
bore the reputation of a witch for many years, and her suits at law frequently brought her 
name into the General Court records. — Mass. Bee. iv. pt. 2, pp. 540-555; v. pp. 6, 26. p. 

10 To a person interested in the psychological inquiries pertaining to the witchcraft mani- 
festations of the seventeenth century, the case of Elizabeth Knap is one of the most in- 
teresting that occurred in New-England. It took place twenty- one years before the great 
outbreak at Salem, and under circumstances which gave opportunity for calm observation. 
Samuel Willard, afterwards pastor of the Old South Church, in Boston, and who distin- 
guished himself by his prudent conduct in 1692, was the pastor of the church in Groton at 
the time, and was the daily attendant and spiritual adviser of the family. He wrote a full 
account of the case, which fortunately has been preserved, and is now printed in the Mather 
Papers, pp. 555-571. In this paper he has calmly discussed the question whether her dis- 
temper was real or counterfeit. At first he was inclined to the latter opinion, and at times 
she confessed as much ; but in view of all the facts he was of the opinion that there was 
something preternatural in the case. Increase Mather has an abstract of Mr. Willard's 
account in Remarkable Providences, p. 99. See also Magnolia, vol. ii. p. 449. p. 

* Rebeckah Nurse. h. 

11 Complaints against Eunice Cole for being a witch were made as early as 1656, and 
were continued till 1680, when she was up before the Quarter Court at Hampton, and 
committed on suspicion of being a witch. During most of this period she was a town pau- 
per. Thirty -five depositions and other original papers relating to Eunice Cole's case, from 
Sept. 4, 1656 to Jan. 7, 1673-4, are in Mass. Archives, vol. exxxv. fol. 2-15. See also 
Drake's Annals of Witchcraft, pp. 99-103. p. 

12 In the printed text Gov. Hutchinson gives but four lines to the Morse case. Fuller 
details may be found in Remarkable Providences, pp. 101-111; Magnolia, vol. ii. pp. 450- 
452, and Drake's Annals, pp. 144-150. In his Appendix (pp. 258-296), Mr. Drake has given 
depositions and other papers connected with the proceedings against Mrs. Morse. Other 
depositions, with a petition of Wm. Morse in behalf of his wife, are in Mass. Archives, 
vol. exxxv. fol. 11-19. 

Mrs. Morse was convicted 20 May, 1680, and sentenced to be hanged. June 1, she was 
reprieved till the next session of the court. " Nov. 3. The deputies, on perusal of the acts 
" of the honored court of assistants relating to the woman condemned for witchcraft, do 
2* 



1Q WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1692. 

the other, would have knives stuck in his back, and once one of them seemed 
to come out of his month. He would bark like a dog, and cluck like a hen, and 
once was carried away and could not be found for some time; but at length 
was discovered creeping on one side, dumb and lame, and, when able to ex- 
press himself said " that P 1 13 had carried him over the top of the house, 

and hurt him against a cart wheel in the barn." Morse took the boy to 
bed with him and his wife, and had the chamber pot with its contents thrown 
upon them, and they were severely pinched and pulled out of bed, &c. These 

things are related very seriously,* and it is a great wonder that P 1 

escaped ; for it does not appear that anybody suspected the knavery of the 
boy. 

in 1683, the demons removed to Connecticut River again, wdiere the 
house of one Desborough 14 was molested, and stones, earth, &c. thrown at 
him, not only through the windows, but doors, by an invisible hand ; and a 
fire, kindled nobody knew how, burnt u p; *no small part of his estate. It 
seems one of Desborough's neighbors had a quarrel with him about a chest 
of clothes which Desborough detained ; and, as soon as they were restored, 
the troubles ceased. All was charged upon the demons, and nobody, from 
anything which now appears, suspected the honest neighbor. 

In 1682, the house of George Walton, 15 a Quaker, at Portsmouth, in 

A> 
" not understand the reason why execution of the sentence given against her bj r the court 
" is not executed, and that her second reprieval seems to us to be beyond what the law will 
" allow, and do therefore judge meet to declare ourselves against it, with reference to the 
" concurrence of the honored magistrates hereto." This action was " not consented to by the 
"magistrates." (MS. memoranda in Mass. Archives, vol. cxxxv. fol. 18.) The deputies 
subsequently voted to give her a new trial; but the magistrates refused. Between this 
disagreement of the deputies and magistrates she escaped punishment. She was released 
from prison, but never acquitted or pardoned. p. 

13 Caleb Powel was the name of the person implicated. p. 
* Magnalia. h. 

14 John Russell, minister of Haclley (in whose house the regicides Whalley and Goff 
were long concealed), communicated this case to Increase Mather under date of August 2, 
1683. It occurred the year before at Hartford. An abstract is in Remarkable Providences, 
pp. 112-114, and Magnalia, vol. ii. p. 452. The original account is printed in Mather 
Papers, pp. 86-88. p. 

15 An account of the Walton case was furnished to Increase Mather by Joshua Moody, 
then minister at Portsmouth. {Mather Papers, p 361.) The paper is given in Remarkable 
Providences, pp. 114-116, and Magnalia, vol. ii. p. 453. 

A long and circumstantial account of the disturbance in George Walton's house is the 
subject-matter of a tract, printed in London, 1698, 15 pp. 4to., a copy of which is in the 
Dowse Library belonging to the Massachusetts Historical Society. The title of the tract 
is " Lithobo£ia ; or the Stone Throwing Devil. Being an exact and true Account of 
" the various actions of Infernal Spirits, or (Devils Incarnate) Witches, or both; and the 
" great Disturbance and Amazement they gave to George Walton's family, at a place 
" called Great Island, in the Province of New-Hampshire in New-England. . .. . By R. C. 
" who was a sojourner in the same family the whole time, and an ocular witness of these 
" Diabolic Inventions ; the contents thereof being manifestly known to the" inhabitants of 
" that Province, and the persons of other provinces, and is upon record in his Majesty's 
" Council Court held in that Province." 

The writer says, " Some time ago being in America, in his Majesty's service, I was lodged 
" in the said George Walton's house, a planter there." 

The following names appear as attestants of the truth of the narrative : " Samuel Jennings, 



WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1692. II 

New-Hampshire, was attacked in much the same manner. Walton had con- 
tention with a woman about a tract of land, and she was supposed to have 
done the mischief but by witchcraft. 
About the same time another ho 
New-Hampshire. And, in 1G84, one Philip Smith, 17 a justice of the court, 

''Governor of West-Jarsey; Walter Clark, Deputy-Governor of Road-Island; Arthur 
"Cook; Matt. Borden of Road-Island; Oliver Hooton of Bavbadoes, Merchant; T. 
" Maul of Salem in N. E. merchant; Capt. Walter Barefoot; John Hussey and John 
" Hussey 's wife." The narrative treats of throwing about, by an invisible power, stones, 
brick-bats, hammers, mauls, crow-bars, spits and other domestic utensils, for the period of 
three months. 

" R. C," the author of the tract, I have no doubt, was Richard Chamberlayne, Secretary 
of the Province of New-Hampshire in 1682. That he resided at Great Island appears by 
his signature to several depositions printed in Neio-Hampshire Hist. Coll., vols. ii. and viii. 
Chamberlayne and Barefoot were among the prosecutors of Joshua Moody at Portsmouth 
the next year for not conducting his services according to the English Prayer Book, and 
occasioned his imprisonment for three months. It appears that Increase Mather was aware 
that Secretary Chamberlayne had prepared an account of the Walton case, and he wrote to 
Mr. Moody to procure it, together with a narrative of the Hortando case. Mr. Moody, 
July 14, 1683, writes to Mr. Mather: "About that at G. Walton's, because my interest runs 
" low with the Secretary, I have desired Mr. Woodbridge to endeavor the obtaining it; and 
" if he can get it, shall send it by the first; though if there should be any difficulty there- 
" about, you may do pretty well with what you have already." (Mather Papers, p. 359.) 
Mr. Moody writes again, August 23 : " My endeavors also have not been a- wanting to obtain 
" the other ["the Walton case], but find it difficult. If more may be gotten, you may expect 
" [it] when I come, or else must take up with what you had from me at first, which was 
" the sum of what was then worthy of notice, only many other particular actings of like 
" nature had been then and since. It began on a Lord's day, June 11, 1682, and so contin- 
" ued for a long time, only there was some respite now and then. The last thing [printed 
" sight] I have heard of was the carrying away of several axes in the night, notwithstand- 
" ing they were laid up, yea locked up very safe, as the owner thought at least, which was 
" done this spring. [Postscript.] Before sealing of my letter came accidentally to my hand 
" this enclosed that I had from William Morse of Newbury concerning the troubles at his 
" house in 1679. If it may be of use to me, you may please to peruse and return it." 
(Ibid. 360.) 

The Secretary doubtless declined to furnish the unlovely Puritans at the Bay with his 
narrative, and, on returning to England, he printed it in London in 1698. The tract shows 
that Church-of-England men were quite as observant of signs and wonders as the Puritans. 
" Who that peruses these preternatural occurrences," asks the writer, " can possibly be so 
" much of an enemy to his own soul and irrefutable reason, as obstinately to oppose him- 
" self to, or confusedly fluctuate in, the opinion and doctrine of demons or spirits, and 
" witches ? " 

The tract is reprinted in Historical Magazine (N.Y., vol. v. pp. 321-327), and is followed 
(vol. vi. p. 159) with a statement, by Rev. Lucius Alden, on the persons and localities men- 
tioned therein. Brewster's Ra?nbles about Portsmouth, 2d series, 1869, has a chapter on 
the subject (pp. 343-351), with Mr. Alden's statement; but none of these writers seem to 
be aware that Richard Chamberlayne was the author of Lithobolia. Since writing the 
above I find the tract under the name of Richard Chamberlain in British Museum Cata- 
logue, 1814, and the title was so copied into Watt and Lowndes. p. 

16 This was the Hortando case, a brief narrative of which, "sent in by an intelligent 
person," is given in Remarkable Providences, pp. 116-118, and Magnolia, vol. ii. p. 453. 

" The enclosed I transcribed from Mr. Tho. Broughton, who read to me what he took 
" from the mouth of the woman and her husband, and judge it credible; though it be not 
" the half of what is to be gotten. I expect from him a fuller and further account before 
" I come down to the Commencement." (Mr. Moody to Mr. Mather, August 23, 1683. 
Mather Papers, p. 360.) The date, place and attending circumstances make it clear that this 
was " the narrative sent in by an intelligent person," which Mr. Mather priuted. p. 

17 Gov. Hutchinson found this case reported in Magnolia, vol. ii. p. 454. p. 



f 






12 WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 

and representative of the town of Hadley, on Connecticut River, an hypo- 
chondriac person, supposed himself to be under an evil-hand ; and sus- 
pected a woman, one of his neighbors ; and, continuing in that state until 
he died, he was generally supposed to be bewitched to death. 

In 1685, a large and circumstantial account of all or most of these in- 
stances was published, 18 and anybody who doubted the truth of them would 
have been pronounced a Sadducee. 

In 1688 19 begun a more alarming instance than any which preceded it. 
Four of the children of John Goodwin, a grave man and good liver at 
the north part of Boston, were generally believed to be bewitched. I have 
often heard those who were then upon the stage speak of the great con- 
sternation it occasioned. The children were all remarkable for an ingenui- 
ty of temper, had been religiously educated, and were supposed to be 
incapable of imposture or fraud. The eldest was a girl about thirteen years 
of age, it is said, it may be something more. She had charged a laundress 
with taking away some of the family linen. The mother of the laundress 
was one of the wild Irish, and gave the girl very bad language ; after which 
she fell into a sort of tits, which were said to have something diabolical in 
them. One of her sisters and two of her brothers, whose ages were not 
transmitted, 20 soon followed her example, and they are said to have been 
tormented in the same parts of their bodies at the same time, though kept 
at a distance so as not to know one another's complaints. One thing was 
remarkable, and ought to have been taken more notice of, that all 
their complaints were in the day time, and that they slept comfortably all 
night. They were sometimes deaf, then dumb, then blind, and sometimes 
all these together. Their tongues would be drawn down their throats, then 
pulled out upon their chins. Their jaws, necks, shoulders, elbows, and all 
their joints would appear to be dislocated, and they would make the most 
piteous outcries of being cut with knives and beat ; and plain marks of 
wounds might afterwards be discovered. The ministers of Boston and 
Charlestown kept a day of fasting and prayer at the troubled house ; and 
after that the youngest child made no more complaints. But the magistrates 

18 Increase Mather's Remarkable Providences is the work here alluded to ; but the date 
should have been 1684 and not 1685. The hook was issued in the Spring of 1684. 
Nathaniel Mather, in a letter to the author, dated Dec. 31, 1684, acknowledges receiving a 
copy on which " was written in your hand 7 ber 16." {Mather Papers, p. 58.) John Bishop 
acknowledges the receipt of a copy, in a letter dated June 10, 1684. (Ibid. p. 312.) This 
erroneous date, and a typographical error in the Magnalia, vol. ii. p. 473, have led some 
writers to suppose that Cotton Mather wrote his first book on witchcraft in 1685. He was 
then twenty-two years of age. Before 1686 he published no works except Elegy on Rev. 
Nath. Collins, 1685, and The Boston Ephemeris, an Almanac for 1683, neither of which are 
in the printed list of his works. His first writing on witchcraft was issued in 1689. p. 

19 This date is correct. It is singular that in his final draft the author should be in doubt, 
and say, " in 1687 or 1688." p. 

20 The names and ages of the children were as follows : Martha 13, John 11, MercvV, 
Benjamin 5. * P> 



WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 13 

unfortunately interposed ; and the old woman was apprehended, examined, 
committed and brought to trial, and seems neither to have owned nor denied 
her guilt, being either really a distracted person, or endeavoring to appear 
such ; and, before sentence of death was passed, the opinion of physicians was 
taken ; but they returned that she was compos mentis, and she was executed, 
declaring at her death the children should not, or perhaps it might be, would 
not be relieved by her death, and that others besides her had a hand in 
their afflictions. This no doubt came to the children's knowledge ; and 
their complaints immediately increased beyond what they had ever been 
before. As this relation is in print, 21 and but few persons have doubted 
that there was a preternatural agency in the case of these children, and 
[as] Mr. Baxter, in a preface to an edition published in London, says : 
" the evidence is so convincing that he must be a very obdurate Sadducee 
who will not believe," I will spend a little more time in examining it, than 
otherwise I should think convenient. 

The eldest is after this the principal subject ; and was taken into a min- 
ister's 22 family, where for some days she behaved orderly, but after that sud- 
denly fell into her fits. The relation chiefly consists of their being violently 
beaten by specters ; put into red hot ovens, and their sweating and panting ; 
having cold water thrown upon them, and then shivering ; being roasted 

21 Cotton Mather's Memorable Providences, Boston, 1689. 2d cd. London, 1691. p. 

22 Cotton Mather's. On the 4th of October, 1688, Joshua Moody wrote a letter to In- 
crease Mather, then in London, in which he spoke of the Goodwin case. (Mather Papers, 
pp. 367-8.) He says " We have a very strange thing among us, which we know not what 
" to make of, except it be witchcraft, as we think it must needs be. Three or four children 
" of one Goodwin, a mason, that have been for some weeks grievously tormented, crying 
" out of head, eyes, tongue, teeth; breaking their neck, back, thighs, knees, legs, feet, 
" toes, &e. ; and then they roar out, Oh my head ! Oh my neck! and from one part to an- 
" other the pain runs almost as fast as I write it. The pain is doubtless very exquisite, and 
" the cries most dolorous and affecting; and this is noteable, that two or more of them cry 
" out of the same pain in the same part, at the same time, and as the pain shifts to another 
" place in one, so in the other, and thus it holds them for an hour together and more; and when 
" the pain is over they eat, drink, walk, play, laugh, as at other times. They are generally well 
" a nights. A great many good Christians spent a day of prayer there. Mr. Morton came 
" over, and we each spent an hour in prayer ; since wh ich, the parents suspecting an old woman 
" and her daughter living hard by, complaint was made to the justices, and compassion had 
" so far, that the women were committed to prison and are there now. Yesterday I called 
" in at the house, and was informed by the parent that since the women were confined the 
" children have been well while out of the house; but as soon as any of them come into 
" the house, then taken as formerly ; so that now all their children keep at their neigh- 
" bors' houses. If any step home they are immediately afflicted, and while they keep out 
" arc well. I have been a little larger in this narrative because I know you have 
" studied these things. We cannot but think the Devil has a hand in it by some instru- 
" ment. It is an example, in all the parts of it, not to be parallelled. You may inquire 
" further of Mr. Oakes [Edward, Jr., the bearer of the letter], whose uncle [Dr. Thomas 
" Oakes] administered physic to them at first, and he will probably inform you more fully." 

We have here a motive other than curiosity or credulity, which led Mr. Mather to take one 
of the Goodwin children to his own house, where he kept her till spring and till she fully 
recovered. This letter of Mr. Moody's was prior to any writing on the subject by Mr. 
Mather. An account of this case is in the Magnalia, vol. ii. pp. 456-465. See also North 
American Review, vol. cviii. pp. 350-359. p. 



I^ WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 

upon invisible spits ; having their heads nailed to the floor, so as that they could 
hardly be pulled away ; their joints first stiff and then limber ; pins stuck 
into their flesh ; choaked until they were black in the face ; having the 
witches invisible chain upon them ; dancing with a chair, like one riding 
on horseback ; being able to read bad books, and blind if they looked into 
a good one ; being drunk without anything to intoxicate. 

There is nothing in all this but what may be accounted for from craft 
and fraud, which children of that age are very capable of; or from agility of 
body, in which these children are exceeded by common tumblers much 
younger. There are some instances mentioned of another sort, namely : 
of their being tormented when any person took up a bible to look into it 
whilst the children were in the room, although their faces were another 
way, and they could not see it until it was laid aside ; their telling of plate 
at the bottom of the well, which, it is said, they had never heard of before — 
and yet, in fact, plate had been lost there ; of their eyes being put out when 
they were told to look to God, not only in English, but in Latin, Greek, 
or Hebrew ; whereas from the Indian language no such effect followed, the 
Devil being said not to have understood that language 23 — all which serve 
only to evidence the inattention and the strong prejudice in favor of the chil- 
dren in those who were their observers. The strangest circumstance of all 
is that the children, after their return to their ordinary behavior, made 
profession of religion, and reckoned their affliction among the incentives to 
it. One of them was, many years after, one of my tenants, a grave, reli- 
gious woman, [and] was never known to have made any confession of fraud, 
probably was never charged with it. But even all this is not miracu- 
lous. # 24 The account of this affair being made public obtained general 
credit. 

23 A friend skilled in the Indian dialects suggests that Mr. Mather's pronunciation of the 
Indian language was probably so imperfect that the Devil was excusable for not under- 
standing it. p. 

* In the year 1720, at Littleton, in the Massachusetts Province, a family were supposed 
to be bewitched in much the same manner with this of Goodwin's. I shall give a brief ac- 
count of the affair, and the manner how the fraud came to be disclosed, to show the simili- 
tude between the two cases, and to discourage parents from showing the least countenance 
to such pranks in their children. 

One J. B. of Littleton, had three daughters of 11, 9, [and] 5 years of age. The eldest 
being a forward girl, and having heard and read many strange stories, used to surprise the 
company where she was with her manner of relating them. Pleased with applause she 
went from stories to dreams, and from dreams to visions, attaining the art of swooning 
away, and being to all appearance breathless for some time ; and upon her reviving would 
tell strange stories of what she had met with in this and other worlds. "When she met 
with the words God, Christ or Holy Ghost in the Bible, she would drop down with scarce 
anv signs of life in her. Strange noises were heard in the house, stones came down the 
chimney and did great mischief. It was common to find her in ponds of water, crving out 
she should be drowned, sometimes upon the top of the house, and sometimes upon the tops of 
trees, and, being asked, said she flew there ; complained of beating and pinching bv invisi- 
ble hands which left the marks upon her. She complained of a woman of the'town, one 
Mrs. D— y, and that she appeared to her, and once her mother struck at the place where 



WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 1 7 

the country for his gravity and piety, and his favorable opinion of the old 
Puritanism, as much as for his knowledge in the law. The trials of the 
witches in Suffolk had been published not long before. 31 The evidence 
here was of the same sort with what had been judged sufficient to hang people 
there. Reproach then for hanging witches, although it has been often cast 
upon the people of New-England by those of Old-, yet it must have been 
done with an ill grace. We had their best authority to justify us ; besides 
the prejudices of education [and] disposition from thence to give a serious, 
solemn construction to even common events in Providence, might be urged 
as an excuse here in some measure ; but in England this was an age of as 
great gaiety as any age whatever, and of as great infidelity in general as any 
which preceded it. 

Sir William Phips, the Governor just arrived, 32 seems to have given in 
to the prevailing opinion. He was much under the direction of the spirit- 
ual fathers of the country. Mr. Stoughton, the Lieut. Governor, and at 
the head of the Court 33 for trial of the witches, and who had great influ- 
ence upon the rest of the judges, had taken up this notion that, although 
the Devil might appear in the shaj3e of a guilty person, yet he w T ould never 
be permitted to assume the shape of an innocent person.* This opinion, at 
first, was generally received and would not bear to be contradicted. Some 
of the most religious women who were accused, when they saw the appear- 
ance of distress and torture in the girls, and heard their solemn declarations 
that they saw the shapes or specters of the accused afflicting them, persuad- 

witchcraft in New-England. An abstract of the case is in Wonders of the Invisible World, 
pp. 5-5-60 ; and allusions to the same are found in nearly all subsequent treatises on witch- 
craft. It is perhaps the most noted case on record, as Sir Matthew Hale here sanctioned by 
his great name the admission of spectral evidence, and the dogma that the devil could act 
only through persons in league with him, that is, actual witches. In the Dowse Library 
is " A Discourse concerning the great mercy of God in preserving us from the Power and 
" Malice of Evil Angels; written by Sir Matthew Hale, at Cambridge 26 March 1661 [1665], 
" upon occasion of a Tryal of certain Witches before him the week before at St. Edmund s 
11 Bury." London, 1693. 4to. p. 

3i 1684. p. 

32 Sir William Phips arrived at Boston, May 14, 1692. Increase Mather returned from 
his four years' mission as colonial agent in England, in the same vessel. p. 

33 The organization and commission of the court is given in note 44. p. 

* " A gentleman of more than ordinary understanding, learning and experience, desired 
"me to write to New-England about your trials and convictions of witches ; not being 
" satisfied with the evidence upon which some who have been executed were found 
" guilty. He told me, that in the time of the great reformation parliament, a certain per- 
" son or persons had a commission to discover and prosecute witches. Upon these prose- 
" cutions many were executed, in at least one county in England, until, at length, a gentle- 
" man of estate and of great character for piety was accused, Avhich put an end to the com- 
*• mission. And the judges upon a re-hearing, reversed many judgments; but many lives 
" had been taken away. All that I speak with much wonder that any man, much less a 
" man of such abilities, learning and experience as Mr. Stoughton, should take up a per- 
" suasion, that the devil cannot assume the likeness of an innocent, to afflict another person. 
" In my opinion, it is a persuasion utterly destitute of any solid reason to render it so much 
" as probable, and besides, contradictory to many instances of fact in history. If you think 
" good, you may acquaint Mr. Stoughton and the other judges with what I write." Letter 
from London to I. Mather, Jan. 9, 1692-3. H. 



iS WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 

ed themselves they were witches, and that the Devil, somehow or other, 
though they could not remember when, had taken possession of their evil 
hearts, and obtained some sort of assent to his afflicting in their shapes; 
and thereupon they confessed themselves to be guilty. 

Even to this day, the country seems rather to be divided in opinion whe- 
ther it was the accused or the afflicted who were under some preternatural 
or diabolical possession, than whether the afflicted were under bodily dis- 
tempers, or altogether guilty of fraud and imposture. 

The trial of Richard Hatheway, 34 before Lord Chief Justice Holt, 
opened the eyes of all except the lowest part of the people in England ; and 
an act of Parliament in his late Majesty's reign 35 will prevent the prejudice 
which remains in them from the mischiefs it used to produce on juries 
in judicial proceedings. It is a great pity the like examples of conviction 
and punishment had not been made here. I hope an impartial narrative of 
the supposed witchcrafts at Salem will convince the New-England reader 
that there was no thing preternatural in the whole affair ; but all proceeded 
from the most amazing wickedness of the accusers. 

In February, 1 691 [-2], a daughter and a niece of Mr. Parris, 36 the minister 

34 Richard Hatheway, a blacksmith's apprentice, was tried before chief justice Holt, 
March 25, 1702, for imposture. He pretended to be bewitched by Sarah Morduck, and to 
be restored from his fits only by drawing blood from her by scratching. She had been 
tried for witchcraft by the same court the year before, and acquitted. He pretended to 
vomit pins, and to fast for ten weeks. " All the devils in hell," said the chief justice, " could 
" not have helpedyou fast so long." Pins werefoundin his pocket ; andbeing closely watched, 
it was ascertained that he partook of foodjvvhen he assumed to be fasting. Another woman 
was brought in while he was in his fits, aria" by scratching her he recovered as well as before. 
He was sentenced to imprisonment for one year, and to stand in the pillory three times. 
Rev. Francis Hutchinson states the case in Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft, London 
2d edition, 1720, p. 280, and it appears in Wonders of the Invisible World, pp. 55 and 60. 
The case with the evidence and arguments is reported in Howell's State Trials, vol. xiv.pp. 
639-669. Hatheway's master and mistress, who sustained the apprentice in these impos- 
tures, were next prosecuted for assault on Sarah Morduck and for riot; and their trial is 
reported in the same volume. 

Howell's State Trials contain full reports of other witchcraft proceedings, viz. : Case of 
Mary Smith, 1616, vol. ii. p. 1050 ; Proceeding against the Essex Witches, 1645, vol. iv. p. 
817 ; and Proceedings against three Devon Witches, 1682, vol. viii. p. 1018. p. 

35 Eleven trials for witchcraft were held before chief justice Holt, from 1694 to 1702, in 
which he so charged the juries that they generally brought in verdicts of acquittal. The 
English statutes for the punishment of witchcraft, however, were not repealed till 1736. 
9 Geo. II. chap. 5, Statutes at Large, vol. xvii. p. 3. p. 

36 " An Account of the Life and Character of Rev. Samuel Parris, of Salem village, and 
" of his connection with the Witchcraft Delusion of 1692. By Samuel P. Fowler [of Dan- 
" vers] " (Salem, 1857, 20 pp. 8vo.), is the fullest and most impartial estimate of Mr. Parris's 
character which has appeared in print. Deacon Fowler is an officer of the original church 
of Salem village, now Danvers ; he has the best collection of witch books in New-England, 
and is one of the most experienced antiquaries of the Essex Institute. He dispels much of 
the misapprehension which has existed respecting this noted clergyman. 

Mr. Parris remained with his people for five years after these events, and in the midst of 
local disputes outside of the witchcraft tragedy. Mr. Fowler says (p. 19), " It seems there 
" was always a majority of the parish in favor of Mr. Parris remaining with them; and 
" there appears to have been a very general mistake with regard to his dismission from his 
" people, they supposing that he was hastily driven away from the village ; whereas he 






WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 1 9 

of Salem village, girls of ten or eleven years of age, and one or two more 
girls in the neighborhood, made the same sort of complaints as Goodwin's 
children had done two or three [four] years before. The physicians, having 
no other way of accounting for the disorder, pronounced them bewitched. An 
Indian woman who lived with the minister, with her husband, 37 tried an ex- 
periment to find out the witch. This coming to the children's knowledge, 
they cried out upon the Indian woman as appearing to them, pinching, 
pricking and tormenting them, and fell into fits, became convulsed, dis- 
torted, &c. 

Tituba, the name of the woman, who was a Spanish Indian, as some 
accounts tell us, owned that her mistress had taught her in her own coun- 
try how to find out a witch ; but she denied her being one herself. Several 
private fasts were kept at the minister's house, and several more by the 
whole village, and by neighboring parishes, and a public fast through 
the colony to seek to God to rebuke Satan, &c. Soon after the number 
of the complainants increased, and among them girls, two or three wo- 
men, and some old enough to be admitted witnesses. These had their fits 
too, and cried out, not only upon Tituba, but upon an old melancholy dis- 
tracted woman, Sarah Osburn, and a bed-rid old woman, Sarah Good. 
Tituba, urged to it by her master as she afterwards declared,* confessed 
herself a witch, and that the two old women were confederates with her, and 
thereupon they were all committed to prison ; and Tituba being searched 
was said to have the marks of the Devil's wounding her upon her body,t 
but more probably of Spanish cruelty. This was the first of March. About 
three weeks after two other women who were church-members and of good 
character, [Martha] Corey and [Rebecca] Nurse, were complained of, ex- 
amined and would confess nothing, but were committed. Not only the 
three children, while the women were under examination, fell into their fits 
and had all their complaints, but the mother of one of the children and wife 
of Thomas Putnam complained of Nurse as tormenting her, and made most 
terrible shrieking to the amazement of all in the neighborhood. Such was 

" continued and maintained himself through a ministerial quarrel of five years, until he 
" saw fit to discontinue it, when he informed his church of his intentions." 

Mr. Fowler's entire paper is reprinted in Mr. Drake's Witchcraft Delusion in New-Eng- 
land, vol. iii. pp. 198-221. The anonymous Ballad of 1692, Giles Corey and Goodwyfe 
Corey, which Mr. Drake reprints in the same volume (pp. 173-177), and supposes Mr. J. G. 
Whitticr to have been the author — " as but one person could have written it " — was contri- 
buted to a Salem newspaper, more than thirty years ago, by Mr. Fitch Poole, of Danvers, 
now librarian of the Peabody Institute in Pcabody. v P. 

37 John Indian and his wife Tituba were slaves. In the mittimus to the jail keeper at 
Boston, she is described as " an Indian woman belonging to Samuel Parris of Salem village." 
(VVoodward's Records of Salem. Witchcraft, vol. i. p. 15.) Calef (p. 19) says, " she lay in 
" jail till sold for her fees." The Salem delusion had its origin in the fetichism practised 
by these two ignorant Spanish- African slaves, whom Mr. Parris probably obtained from the 
Barbadoes, where he was at one time in business. p. 

* R. Calef. [More Wonders, p. 91.] H. 

f Hale. [Modest Inquiry, p. 25, ed. 1711.] h. 

4 



20 WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 

the infatuation that a child* of Sarah Good, not above four or five years 
old, was committed also, being charged with biting the afflicted who showed 
the print of small teeth upon their arms. 

80011 after, April 3, Sarah Cloyse, sister to Nurse, being at meeting, and 
Mr. Parris taking for his text John vi. 70, " Have not I chosen j^ou 
twelve, and one of you is a Devil?" she was offended and went out of meet- 
ing, and she was soon after complained of, examined and committed ; and 
about the same time Elizabeth Proctor was charged ; and, her husband ac- 
companving her to her examination, he was complained of also, and both 
committed. The great inrprudence, to say the best of it, in those who were 
in authority [Hathorne and Corwin, local magistrates], in encouraging and 
putting words into the mouths of the accusers, or suffering others to do it, 
will appear by the examination of these persons remaining upon the files of 
the court. The accusers and accused were brought before the court. Mr. 
Parris, who had been over-officious from the beginning, was employed to 
examine these, 38 and most of the rest of the accused. 

At a court 39 held at Salem, 11th April, 1692, by the honoured Thomas 
Danforth, deputy governor. Q. John (i. e. the Indian), who hurt 
you ? A. Goody Proctor first, and then Goody Cloyse. Q. What did she 
do to you ? A. She brought the book to me. Q. John, tell the truth, who 
hurts you ? Have you been hurt ? A. The first was a gentlewoman I saw. 
Q. Who next? A. Goody Cloyse. Q. But who hurt you next? A. 
Goody Proctor. Q. What did she do to you ? A. She choked me, and 
brought the book. Q. How oft did she come to torment you ? A. A good 
many times, she and Goody Cloyse. Q. Do they come to you in the night as 
well as the day ? A. They come most in the day. Q. Who ? A. Goody 
Cloyse and Goody Proctor. Q. Where did she take hold of you ? A. 
Upon my throat, to stop my breath. Q. Do you know Goody Cloyse and 

* Calef. [p. 92.] h. 

38 This statement is a mistake, and is changed in the final draft. Mr. Parris on no occa- 
sion was employed to examine the accused. At the request of the magistrates he took 
down the evidence, he heing a rapid penman and stenographer. On the occasion mentioned in 
the next paragraph, Danforth put the questions, and the record is, " Mr. Parris being de- 
" sired and appointed to write out the examination, did take the same, and also read it be- 
" fore the council in public." p. 

39 This was a meeting of the council for a preliminary examination, and not " a court" 
for the trial of the accused. Danforth, deputy governor; Addington, secretary, and Rus- 
sell, Hathorne, Appleton, Sewall and Corwin, members of the council, Avere present. It 
was the only examination that Samuel Sewall attended. On his return to Boston he made 
this entry in his diary : " April 11, 1692. Went to Salem, where, in the meeting house, the 
" persons accused of Avitehcraft were examined; was a very great assembry ; 'twas awful 
" to see how the afflicted were agitated." At a later date he inserted in the margin, " Vce, 
" vce, vce." These words have been taken by a late writer " as expressions of much sensibility 
" at the extent to which he had been misled." He did in later years regret, and well he 
might, the course he took in the Avitchcraft trials ; but he never expressed, as the writer 
does, his disbelief in the reality of diabolical agency as exhibited at that examination. The 
occasion itself Avas mournful enough to draw forth these exclamations from one holding his 
opinions ; and hence they are explained Avithout a forced interpretation. p. 



WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 21 

Goody Proctor ? A. Yes, here is Goody Cloyse. (Cloyse) When did I 
hurt thee ? A. A great many times. (Cloyse) Oh, you are a grievous liar. 
Q. What did this Goody Cloyse do to you ? A. She pinched and bit me 
till the blood came. Q. How long since this woman came and hurt you ? 
A. Yesterday at meeting. Q. At any time before ? A. Yes, a great many 
times. 

Mary Walcot, who hurts you ? A. Goody Cloyse. Q. What did she 
do to you ? A. She hurt me. Q. Did she bring the book ? A. Yes. 
Q. What were you to do with it ? A. To touch it, and I should be well. — 
Then she fell into a lit. Q. Doth she come alone ? A. Sometimes alone, 
and sometimes in company with Goody Nurse and Goody Corey, and a 
great many I do not know. — Then she fell into a £t again. 

Abigail Williams, did you see a company at Mr. Parris's house eat 
and drink ? A. Yes Sir, that was their sacrament. Q. How many were 
there ? A. About forty, and Goody Cloyse and Goody Good were their 
deacons. Q. What was it? A. They said it was our blood, and they had 
it twice that day. Q. Mary Walcot, have you seen a white man ? A. 
Yes Sir, a great many times. Q. What sort of a man was he ? A. A fine 
grave man, and when he came, he made all the witches to tremble. Abigail 
Williams confirmed the same, and that they had such a sight at Deacon In- 
gersoll's Q. AVho was at Deacon Ingersoll's then? A. Goody Cloyse, 
Goody Nurse, Goody Corey, and Goody Good. 

Then Sarah Cloyse asked for water, and sat down as one seized with a 
dying fainting fit ; and several of the afflicted fell into fits, and some of them 
cried out, Oh ! her spirit is gone to prison to her sister Nurse. 

Elizabeth Proctor, you understand whereof you are charged, viz. to 
be guilty of sundry acts of witchcraft ; what say you to it ? Speak the truth. 
And so you that are afflicted, you must speak the truth, as you will answer 
it before God another day. 

Mary Walcot, doth this woman hurt you ? A. I never saw her so as to 
be hurt by her. Q. Mary Lewis, does she hurt you ? — Her mouth was 
stopped. Q. Ann Putnam, [does she hurt you ? — She could not speak. 
Q. Abigail Williams, does she hurt you? — Her hand was thurst in her 
own mouth. Q. John (Indian), does this woman hurt you? A. This is 
the woman that came in her shift and choked me. Q. Did she ever bring 
the book ? A. Yes Sir. Q. What to do ? A. To write. Q. What, this 
woman ? A. Yes Sir. Q. Are you sure of it ? A. Yes Sir. 

Again, Abigail Williams and Ann Putnam were spoke to by the court, 
but neither of them could make any answer, by reason of dumbness or 
other fits. 

What do you say, Goody Proctor, to these things ? A. I take God 
in heaven to be my witness, that I know nothing of it, no more than the 
child unborn. Q. Ann Putnam, doth this woman hurt you ? A. Yes Sir, 
a great many times. 
4* 




WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1692. 

Then the accused looked upon them and they fell into fits. Q. She does 
not bring the book to you, does she? A. Yes Sir, often, and saith she hath 
made her maid to set her hand to it. Q. Abigail Williams, does this woman 
hurt you ? A. Yes Sir, often. Q. Does she bring the book to you ? A. 
Yes/ Q. What would she have you do with it ? A. To write in it and 
I shall be well. Did not you, said Abigail, tell me, that your maid 40 had 
written ? (Proctor) Dear child, it is not so. There is another judgment, 
dear child. Then Abigail and Ann had fits. By-and-by they cried out, 
Look you, there is Goody Proctor upon the beam. By-and-by both of 
them cried out of Goodman Proctor himself, and said he was a wizard. 
Immediately many, if not all of the bewitched had grievous fits. 

Ann Putman, who hurt these? A. Goodman Proctor and his wife 
too. Afterwards, some of the afflicted cried : There is Proctor going to take 
up Mrs. Pope's feet; and her feet were immediately taken up. Q. What 
do you say, Goodman Proctor, to these things ? A. I know not. I am 
innocent. Abigail Williams cried out, There is Goodman Proctor going to 
Mrs. Pope, and immediately said Pope fell into a fit. You see the Devil 
will deceive you ; the children could see what you was going to do before 
the woman was hurt. I would advise you to repentance, for the Devil is 
about bringing you out. 

Abigail Williams cried out again, There is Goodman Proctor going to 
hurt Goody Bibber ; and immediately Goody Bibber fell into a fit. There 
was the like of Mary Walcot, and clivers others. 

Benjamin Gould gave in his testimony, that he had seen Goodman Corey 
and his wife, Proctor and his wife, Goody Cloyse, Goody Nurse, and Goody 
Griggs in his chamber last Thursday night. Elizabeth Hubbard was in a 
trance during the whole examination. During the examination of Elizabeth 
Proctor, Abigail Williams and Ann Putnam both made offer to strike at 
said Proctor ; but when Abigail's hand came near, it opened, whereas it 
was made up into a fist before, and came down exceeding lightly as it drew 
near to said Proctor, and at length with open and extended fingers touched 
Proctor's hood very lightly. Immediately Abigail cried out, her fingers, 
her fingers, her fingers burned, and Ann Putman took on most grievously 
of her head, and sunk down. 41 

40 The maid here alluded to was Mary Warren, one of the most violent of the accusing 
girls. She was a domestic in Proctor's family. p. 

41 The documents which Gov. Hutchinson printed belong with the court files at Salem, 
which have been very carefully arranged and mounted by Mr. William P. Upham. These 
papers, or such of them as remain, were printed (with many errors) by Mr. W. E. Wood- 
ward, in Records of Salem Witchcraft, Roxbury, 1865, 2 vols. sm. 4to. Among these the 
papers which Gov. Hutchinson printed do not appear. They were doubtless borrowed by 
him, and never returned. In the Massachusetts archives is a volume of witchcraft papers 
(vol. cxxxv.), but these documents are not among them. 

In 1860, Mr. N. I. Bowditch presented a collection of original papers relating to 
Salem witchcraft, which once belonged to the Salem court files, to the Massachusetts His- 
torical Society. More than sixty years ago these papers came into possession of the late 



WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1692. 23 

Salem, April 11th, 1692. Mr. Samuel Parris. was desired by the 
honourable Thomas Danforth deputy governor, and the council, to take 
in writing the aforesaid examinations, and accordingly took and delivered 
them in ; and upon hearing the same, and seeing what was then seen, to- 
gether with the charge of the afflicted persons, were by the advice of the 
Council all committed by us. 

John Hathorne, ) . . , 

T ,, n . >■ Assistants. 

Jonathan Cor win, ) 

Facts often appear in their true light in after ages which had been seen 
in a false one by such as were upon the stage in the time of them. A 
strong bias is now evidently seen in favor of the accusers, and no measures 
were taken to discover the fraud. The same prejudice will appear through 
the whole process. 

John the Indian, one of these accusers, was husband to Tituba the first 
witch complained of. She confessed and was committed to prison. Her 
husband, no doubt, was convinced he should stand a better chance among 
the afflicted than the accused. It is most probable some of the women acted 
from the same principle. As the afflicted increased, so did the accused, of 
course. Great pains were taken to bring some of them to confess ; but in 
general the accused persisted in their innocency until the prisons were filled. 
At length the friends of some of the accused urged them to a confession, 
although they knew they were innocent, the magistrates declaring that con- 
fessing was the way to obtain mercy. The first confession, which remains 
upon the files, is of Deliverance Hobbs, May 11th, 1692, being in prison. 
She owned everything she was required to do. The confessors, like the 
accusers, multiplied, the witches having always company with them, who 
were immediately sent for and examined. No wonder if they were affrighted 
to the last degree ; they owned whatever their friends and magistrates would 
have them. Thus more than an hundred women, many of them of the most 
sober, virtuous livers, some of them of very reputable families in the towns 
of Salem, Beverly, Andover, Billerica, Newbury, were apprehended and 
examined, and generally committed, although most of them who confessed, 
after three or four months imprisonment, were admitted to bail. These con- 
fessions were all very much of the same tenor. One of them may serve as 
a specimen. 

8th Sept. '92. The examination and confession of Mary Osgood, wife 

Hon. John Pickering; who, says Mr. Bowditch, " as he was a sworn officer of the court, 
" had some scruples of conscience about retaining them himself; and therefore, after ex- 
" amining them, gave them to my late father [Dr. Nathaniel Bowditch]. (Proceedings, 
" 1860-62, p. 31)." The collection has been arranged and elegantly bound at the expense 
of Mr. Bowditch. The volume docs not contain the papers printed by Gov. Hutchinson. 
As Gov. Hutchinson printed only portions of these papers, and doubtless took others which 
he did not print, it is a matter of some historical interest to know the present location (if 
they exist) of the original papers which he used. p. 



24 WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 

of Capt. Osgood, of Andover, taken before John Hathorne, Esq. and other 
their Majesty's justices. 

She confesses, that about eleven years ago, when she was in a melan- 
choly state and condition, she used to walk abroad in her orchard, and, upon 
s certain time, she saw the appearance of a cat at the end of the house, 
which yet she thought was a real cat. However, at that time it diverted her 
from praying to God, and instead thereof she prayed to the Devil ; about 
which time she made a covenant with the Devil, who, as a black man, came 
to her and presented her a book, upon which she laid her finger and that 
left a red spot. And that upon her signing her book the devil told her he 
was her god, and that she should serve and worship him, and believes she 
consented to it. She says further, that about two years agone, she was 
carried through the air, in company with Deacon Frye's wife, Ebenezer 
Baker's wife, and Goody Tyler, to five-mile pond, where she was baptized 
by the Devil, who dipped her face in the water, and made her renounce her 
former baptism, and told her that she must be his, soul and body, forever, and 
that she must serve him, which she promised to do. She says, the 
renouncing her first baptism was after her dipping, and that she was trans- 
ported back again through the air, in company with the fore-named persons, 
in the same manner as she went, and believes they were carried upon a 
pole. Q. How many persons were upon the pole ? A. As I said before, 
viz. four persons and no more but whom she had named above. She con- 
fesses she has afflicted three persons, viz. John Sawdy, Martha Sprague and 
Rose Foster, and that she did it by pinching her bed clothes, and giving 
consent the Devil should do it in her shape, and that the Devil could not 
do it without her consent. She confesses the afflicting persons in the court, 
by the glance of her eye. She says, as she was coming down to Salem to be 
examined, she and the rest of the company with her stopped at Mr. Phillips's 
to refresh themselves ; and the afflicted persons, being behind them upon the 
road, came up just as she was mounting again, and were then afflicted, and 
cried out upon her, so that she was forced to stay until they were all passed ; 
and said she only looked that way towards them. 

Do you know the devil can* take the shape of an innocent person 
and afflict ? A I believe he cannot ? Q. Who taught you this way of 
witchcraft ? A. Satan, and that he promised her abundance of satisfaction 
and quietness in her future state, but never performed any thing ; and that 
she has lived more miserably and more discontented since than ever before. 
She confesses further, that she herself, in company with Goody Parker, 
Goody Tyler and Goody Dean, had a meeting at Moses Tyler's house, 
last Monday night, to afflict, and that she and Goody Dean carried the shape 
of Mr. Dean, the minister, between them, to make persons believe that Mr. 

* It is can in the examination, hut, I suppose, by the answer, should have been wrote 
can't. h. 



WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 25 

Dean afflicted. Q. What hindered you from accomplishing what you in- 
tended ? A. The Lord would not suffer it so to be, that the devil should 
afflict in an innocent person's shape. Q. Have you been at any other witch 
meeting ? A. I know nothing thereof, as I shall answer in the presence of 
God and his people ; but said that the black man stood before her, and told 
her, that what she had confessed was a lie ; notwithstanding, she said that 
what she had confessed was true, and thereto put her hand. Her husband 
being present, was asked if he judged his wife to be any way discomposed. 
He answered, that having lived with her so long, he doth not judge her to 
be any wise discomposed, but has cause to believe that what she has said is 
true. 

When Mistress Osgood was first called, she afflicted Martha Sprague and 
Rose Foster by the glance of her eyes, and recovered them out of their 
fits by the touch of her hand. Mary Lacey and Betty Johnson and Han- 
nah Post saw Mistress Osgood afflicting Sprague and Foster. The said 
Hannah Post and Mary Lacey and Betty Johnson, jun. and Rose Foster 
and Mary Richardson were afflicted by Mistress Osgood, in the time of 
her examination, and recovered by her touching of their hands. 

" I underwritten, being appointed by authority to take this examina- 
tion, do testify upon oath, taken in court, that this is a true copy of the sub- 
stance of it, to the best of my knowledge, 5th Jan. 1G92-3. The within 
Mary Osgood was examined before their Majesties' justices of peace in 
Salem. Attest. John Higginson, Just. Peace." 

Owned before the Grand Jury 5 Jan. 1G92-3. Robert Payne, Foreman." 

Mr. Hale, who had the character of an impartial relator, acknowledges 
that the confessors generally went off from their confessions ; some saying 
" they remembered nothing of what they had said," others said " they had be- 
lied themselves," and yet he thinks, if the times had been calm, the condition 
of the confessors might have called for a melius inquirendum ; and seems to 
think remarkable daughters and granddaughters confirming their mother's 
and grandmothers' confession, and instances in the case of Goody Foster, her 
daughter Mary Lacey, and granddaughter Mary Lacey, jun. Their confes- 
sions happen to be preserved, and a few extracts from them will show there 
was no need of further inquiries.* 

21st July, '92. Before Major Gedney, Mr. Hathorne, Mr. Corwin 
;u id Capt. Higginson. 

Goody Foster, you remember we have three times spoken with you, 
and do you now remember what you then confessed to us ? Her former 
confession was read, which she owned to be all true. 

* Mr. Perkins mentions eight or ten proofs of witchcraft, two only of which he supposes 
sufficient, viz. : the testimony of two witnesses and the confession of the party. This 
authority probably had weight with the court as well as with Mr. Hale; hut Perkins 
says it is objected to the latter that a confession may be urged by force or threatening, &c, 
or by a persuasion that it is the best course to save life or obtain liberty, h. 

5 



WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1692. 

Yon have been engaged in very great wickedness, and some have been 
left to hardness of heart to deny ; but it seems that God will give you more 
favor than others, inasmuch as you relent. But your daughter here hath 
confessed some things that you did not tell us of. Your daughter was with 
you and Goody Carrier, when you did ride upon the stick. A. I did not 
know it. Q. How long have you known your daughter to be engaged? 
A. I cannot tell, nor have I any knowledge of it at all. Q. Did you see 
your daughter at the meeting ? A. No. Q. Did not you know your daugh- 
ter to be a witch ? A. No. Q. Your daughter said she was at the witches 
meeting, and that you yourself stood at a distance off and did not partake 
at that meeting ; and you yourself said so also ; give us a relation from the 
beginning until now. A. I know none of their names that were there, but 
only Goody Carrier. Q. Would you know their faces if you saw them ? A. I 
cannot tell. Q. Were there not two companies in the field at the same 
time ? A. I remember no more. 

Mary Warren, one of the afflicted, said that Goody Carrier's shaj)e told 
her, that this Goody Foster had made her daughter a witch. Q. Do not you 
acknowledge that you did so about thirteen years ago ? A. No, and I know 
no more of my daughter's being a witch than what day I shall die upon. 
Q. Are you willing your daughter should make a full and free confession ? 
A. Yes. Q. Are you willing to do so too ? A. Yes. Q. You cannot ex- 
pect peace of conscience without a free confession. A. If I knew any thing 
more, I would speak it to the utmost. Goody Lacey, the daughter, called 
in, began thus ; Oh, mother ! how do you do ? We have left Christ, and 
the Devil hath gat hold of us. How shall I get rid of this evil one ? I 
desire God to break my rocky heart that I may get the victory this time. 
Q. Goody Foster, you cannot get rid of this snare, your heart and mouth 
is not open. A. I did not see the Devil, I was praying to the Lord. Q. 
What Lord ? A. To God. Q. What God do witches pray to ? A. I 
cannot tell, the Lord help me. Q. Goody Lacey, had you no discourse 
with your mother in your riding ? A. No, I think I had not a word. Q. 
Who rid foremost on that stick to the village ? A. I suppose my mother. 
Goody Foster said that Goody Carrier was foremost. Q. Goody Lacey, 
how many years ago since they were baptized ? A. Three or four years 
ago, I suppose. Q. Who baptized them ? A. The old serpent. Q. How 
did he do it ? A. He dipped their heads in the water, saying they were his, 
and that he had power over them. Q. Where was this ? A. At Fall's 
river. Q. How many were baptized that day ? A. Some of the chief; I 
think there were six baptized. Q. Name them. A. I think they were of 
the higher powers. These were then removed. 

Mary Lacey, the grand-daughter, was brought in, and Mary Warren in 
a violent fit. Q. How dare you come in here, and bring the Devil with 
you, to afflict these poor creatures ? A. I know nothing of it. Lacey lay- 
ing her hand on Warren's arm ; she recovered from her fit. Q. You are 



WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 27 

here accused for practising witchcraft upon Goody Ballard ; which way do 
you do it ? A. I cannot tell. Where is my mother that made me a witch, 
and I knew it not ? Q. Can you look upon that maid, Mary Warren, and 
not hurt her ? Look upon her in a friendly way. She trying so to do, 
struck her down with her eyes. Q. Do you acknowledge now you are a 
witch ? A. Yes. Q. How long have you been a witch ? A. Not above 
a week. Q. Did the Devil appear to you ? A. Yes. Q. In what shape ? 
A. In the shape of a horse. Q. What did he say to you ? A. He bid me 
not to be afraid of any thing, and he would not bring me out ; but he has proved 
a liar from the beginning. Q. When was this? A. I know not ; above a 
week. Q. Did you set your hand to the book ? A. No. Q. Did he bid 
you worship him ? A. Yes ; he bid me also afflict persons. You are now 
in the way to obtain mercy if you will confess and repent. She said, The 
Lord help me. Q. Do not you desire to be saved by Christ ? A. Yes. 
Then you must confess freely what you know in this matter. She then pro- 
ceeded. I was in bed, and the Devil came to me, and bid me obey him and I 
should want for nothing, and he would not bring me out. Q. But how long 
ago ? A. A little more than a year. Q. Was that the first time ? A. 
Yes. Q. How long was you gone from your father, when you run away ? 
A. Two days. Q. Where had you your food ? A. At John Stone's. Q. 
Did the Devil appear to you then, when you was abroad ? A. No, but he 
put such thoughts in my mind as not to obey my parents. Q. Who did the 
Devil bid you afflict ? A. Timothy Swan. Richard Carrier comes often 
a-nights and has me to afflict persons. Q. Where do ye go ? A. To Goody 
Ballard's sometimes. Q. How many of you were there at a time ? A. 
Richard Carrier and his mother, and my mother and grandmother. Upon 
reading over the confession so far, Goody Lacey, the mother, owned this 
last particular. Q. How many more witches are there in Andover ? A. 
I know no more, but Richard Carrier. 

Tell all the truth. A. I cannot yet. Q. Did you use at any time to ride 
upon a stick or pole ? A. Yes. Q. How high ? A. Sometimes above the trees. 
Q. Your mother struck down these afflicted persons, and she confessed so 
far, till at last she could shako hands with them freely and do them no hurt. 
Be you also free and tell the truth. What sort of worship did you do the 
Devil ? A. He bid me pray to him and serve him and said he was a god and 
lord to me. Q. What meetings have you been at, at the village? A. I was 
once there and Richard Carrier rode with me on a pole, and the Devil car- 
ried us. Q. Did not some speak to you to afflict the people there ? A. 
Yes, the Devil. Q. Was there not a man also among you there ? A. None 
but the Devil. Q. What shape was the Devil in then ? A. He was a 
black man, and had a high crowned hat. Q. Your mother and your grand- 
mother say there was a minister there. How many men did you see there ? 
A. I saw none but Richard Carrier. .Q. Did you see none else ? A. There 
was a minister there, and I think he is now in prison. Q. Were there not 
, 5* 



_s WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1692. 

two* ministers there ? A. Cannot tell. Q. Was there not one Mr. Bur- 
roughs there? A. Yes. 

The examination contains many pages more of the same sort of proceed- 
ings which I am tired of transcribing. Mr. Hale mentions also the case of 
Richard Carrier, who was a lad of 18 years, accusing his mother, one that 
suffered, but this examination was managed just in the same way. He de- 
nied eveiy thing at first, but was drawn to confession of every thing that' his 
examiners required. 

So seven or eight of the confessors are said to have witnessed against the 
minister Burroughs, but I have seen many examinations wherein he is accus- 
ed just like this of Lacey. Richard Carrier's runs thus : " We met in a 
green, which was the minister's pasture — we were in two companies at last. 
I think there was a few men with them. — I heard Sarah Good talk of a min- 
ister or two. — One of them was she that had been at the eastward ; his name 
is Burroughs, and is a little man. — I remember not the other's name." 

After these examinations, the reader will find no great difficulty in giving 
credit to the recantations of the confessors when they apprehended them- 
selves out of danger. One or two may be sufficient. 

" AVe whose names are underwritten, inhabitants of Andover ; when as 
that horrible and tremendous judgment beginning at Salem village in the 
year 1692, by some called witchcraft, first breaking forth at Mr. Paris's 
house, several young persons, being seemingly afflicted, did accuse several per- 
sons for afflicting them, and many there believing it so to be, we being inform- 
ed that, if a person was sick, the afflicted persons could tell what or who was 
the cause of that sickness : Joseph Ballard, of Andover, his wife being sick 
at the same time, he either from himself or by the advice of others, fetched 
two of the persons, called the afflicted persons, from Salem village to Ando- 
ver, which was the beginning of that dreadful calamity that befel us in 
Andover, believing the said accusations to be true, sent for the said persons to 
come together to the meeting house in Andover, the afflicted persons being- 
there. After Mr. Barnard had been at prayer, we were blindfolded, and 
our hands were laid upon the afflicted persons, they being in their fits and 
falling into their fits at our coming into their presence, as they said ; and 
some led us and laid our hands upon them, and then they said they were 
well, and that we were guilty of afflicting of them ; whereupon we were all 
seized, as prisoners, by a warrant from the justice of the peace, and forthwith 

* [Note in final draft.] Mr. Deane, one of the ministers of Andover, then near four- 
spore, seems to have been in danger. He is tenderly touched in several of the examina- 
tions, which might be owing to a fair character, and he may be one of the persons accused, 
who caused a discouragement to further prosecutions. " Deliverance Deane being asked 
why she and the rest brought in Mr. Deane as afflicting persons, she answered, it was 
Satan's subtilty, for he told her he would put a sham upon all these things, and make peo- 
ple believe that he did afflict. She said Mrs. Osgood and she gave their consent the devil 
should bring Mr. Deane's shape to afflict. Being asked again if Mrs. Osgood and she acted 
tins business, she said yes." Mr. Deane was much beholden to this woman. h. 



WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 29 

carried to Salem. And by reason of that sudden surprisal, we knowing 
ourselves altogether innocent of that crime, we were all exceedingly astonished 
and amazed, and consternated and affrighted even out of our reason ; and 
our nearest and dearest relations, seeing us in that dreadful condition, 
and knowing our great danger, apprehending that there was no other way to 
save our lives, as the case was then circumstanced, but by our confessing our- 
selves to be such and such persons as the afflicted represented us to be, they, 
out of tender love and pity, persuaded us to confess what we did confess. 
And indeed that confession, that it is said we made, was no other than what 
was suggested to us by some gentlemen, they telling us that we were witches, 
and they knew it, and we knew it, and they knew that we knew it, which 
made us think that it was so ; and our understanding, our reason, our faculties 
almost gone, we were not capable of judging our condition ; as also the hard 
measures they used with us rendered us incapable of making our defence, 
but said any thing and every thing which they desired, and most of what 
we said was but in effect a consenting to what they said. Some time after, 
when we were better composed, they telling us of what we had confessed, 
we did profess that we were innocent and ignorant of such things ; and we 
hearing that Samuel Wardwell had renounced his confession, and quickly 
after condemned and executed, some of us were told that we were going 
after Wardwell. 

" Mary Osgood, Deliverance Dane, Sarah Wilson, 

Mary Tiler, Abigail Barker, Hannah Tiler." 

These unhappy people were not only in the manner which has been 
related, brought to confession, but also obliged to swear to the truth of it. 
At the Superior Court in January they all abode by their confessions. 
They could not tell what the disposition of the court and juries would be, 
and the temptation was the same as at the first examination. But there 
was one Margaret Jacobs, who had more courage than the rest. She had 
been brought not only to accuse herself, but Mr. Burroughs, the minister, 
and even her own grandfather. Before their execution, she was struck 
with horror, and begged forgiveness of Burroughs, who readily forgave her, 
and prayed with her, and for her. An imposthume in her head prevented 
her trial at the court of Oyer and Terminer. At the Superior Court in 
January she delivered a writing in the words following : — 

" The humble declaration of Margaret Jacobs unto the honoured court 
now sitting at Salem, sheweth, 

" That whereas your poor and humble declarant being closely confined 
here in Salem jail for the crime of witchcraft, which crime, thanks be to 
the Lord, I am altogether ignorant of, as will appear at the great day of 
judgment. May it please the honoured court, I was cried out upon by 
some of the possessed persons, as afflicting of them ; whereupon I was 
brought to my examination, which persons at the sight of me fell down, 
which did very much startle and affright me. The Lord above knows I 



go WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 

knew nothing, in the least measure, how or who afflicted them ; they told 
me, without doubt I did, or else they would not fall down at me ; they told 
me if I would not confess, I should be put down into the dungeon and 
would be hanged, but if I would confess I should have my life ; the which 
did so affright me, with my own vile wicked heart, to save my life made me 
make "the confession I did, which confession, may it please the honoured 
court, is altogether false and untrue. The very first night after I had made 
my confession, I was in such horror of conscience that I could not sleep, for 
fear the Devil should carry me away for telling such horrid lies. I was, 
may it please the honoured court, sworn to my confession, as I understand 
since, but then, at that time, was ignorant of it, not knowing what an oath 
did mean. The Lord, I hope, in whom I trust, out of the abundance of his 
mercy, will forgive me my false forswearing myself. What I said was al- 
together false, against my grandfather, and Mr. Burroughs, which I did to save 
my life and to have my liberty ; but the Lord, charging it to my conscience 
made me in so much horror, that I could not contain myself before I had 
denied my confession, which I did, though I saw nothing but death before 
me, choosing rather death with a quiet conscience, than to live in such 
horror, which I could not suffer. Whereupon my denying my confession, 
I was committed to close prison, where I have enjoyed more felicity in spirit 
a thousand times than I did before in my enlargement. 

ki And now, may it please your honours, your poor and humble declarant 
having, in part, given your honours a description of my condition, do leave 
it to your honours pious and judicious discretions to take pity and compas- 
sion on my young and tender years ; to act and do with me as the Lord 
above and your honours shall see good, having no friend but the Lord to 
plead my cause for me ; not being guilty in the least measure of the crime 
of witchcraft, nor any other sin that deserves death from man ; and your 
poor and humble declarant shall forever pray, as she is bound in duty, for 
your honours' happiness in this life, and eternal felicity in the world to come. 
So prays your honours declarant. Margaret Jacobs." 

I shall now proceed in the relation of facts. The accusers having 
charged a great number in the county of Essex, I find in the examinations 
frequent mention of strangers whose shapes or* specters were unknown to 
the afflicted, and now and then the names of a person at Boston and other 
distant places. Several some time after mention Mr. Dean, one of the min- 
isters of Andover, but touch him more tenderly, somewhat as Mrs. Osgood 
in her confession, than they do Burroughs. Mr. Dean probably was better 
known and esteemed than the other, or he would have stood a bad chance. 

Mr. Nathaniel Cary, 42 a gentleman of figure in the town of Charlestown, 

42 Mr. Cary's account is in Calef, pp. 95-99. 

All my references to C. Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World, and to Calef, are to the 
London editions of 1693 and 1700. Mr. S. G. 'Drake reprints both works in liis Witchcraft 
Delusion in New England (Roxbury, 1866, 3 vols, sm, 4to), with the original paging. This 



WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 3 1 

hearing that some at Salem had complained of his wife for afflicting them, 
they went to Salem together out of curiosity to see whether the afflicted 
knew her. They happened to arrive just as the justices were going into 
the meeting house, where they held the court, to examine prisoners. All 
that were brought in were accused, and the girls fell into fits as usual, but 
no notice was taken of Mrs. Gary except that one or two of the afflicted 
came to her and asked her name. After the examination her husband went 
into a tavern, having encouragement that he should have an opportunity of 
discoursing with the girl who had accused his wife. There he met with 
John the afflicted Indian, who attended as a servant in the house. He 
had been there but a short time before the girls came in and tumbled 
about the floor, and cried out Cary, and a warrant from the justices was 
immediately sent to apprehend her. Two of the girls accused her, neither 
of whom she had ever heard of before, and soon after the Indian 
joined them. The justices, by her husband's account, used her very 
roughly, and it was to no purpose to make any defence or to offer any bail, 
but she was committed to prison in Boston and removed from thence 
by habeas corpus to Cambridge and there laid in irons. When the trials at 
Salem came on her husband went there, and finding how things were man- 
aged, thought it high time to contrive her escape. They fled to New-York, 
where Gov. Fletcher received them courteously. They petitioned for a 
trial in the county where they lived. If the judges supposed it necessary 
to try the offence where it was committed, her body being in Middlesex and 
her specter in Essex, it is probable they were under doubt. 

About a week after, viz. the latter end of May, some of the afflicted ac- 
cused Capt. John Alden, 43 of Boston. He had been many years master of 
a sloop in the country service employed between Boston and the eastern 
country, to supply the garrisons, &c. ; and the justices allowed had always 
had the character of an honest man, though one of them, Gedney, told him 
at his examination he then saw cause to think otherwise. Alden, in the 
account he gives, says that the accuser pointed first to another man and 
said nothing, but that upon the man who held her his stooping down to her 
ear, she cried out Alden, Alden, &c. All were ordered into the street and a 
ring made, and then she cried out, There stands Alden, a bold fellow with 
his hat on, sells powder and shot to the Indians, lies with the squaws and has 
papooses. He was immediately taken into custody of the marshal [George 

is the best reprint of these noted books. An excellent and inexpensive edition of the " Won- 
ders" appeared in J. Russell Smith's Library of Old Authors (London, 1862, 16mo.), in 
which the original paging is not indicated. This' edition is especially desirable as it contains 
reprints of A Further Account of the Tryals of the Neio England Witches, 1693, and 
Cases of Conscience concerning Evil Spirits personating Men, 1693, both by Increase 
Mather. There are several other reprints of the Wonders and of Calef 's More Won- 
ders; but they are carelessly done, and are not reliable for historical purposes. A copy 
(with one leaf missing) of the original Wonders (Boston, 1693), brought two hundred and 
ninety dollars at the Woodward auction sale in New-York, April 19, 1869. p. 

43 See Calef, pp. 98-100. p. 

6 



£2 WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1692. 

Herrick] and required to deliver up his sword. A further examination was 
had in the meeting house, his hands held open by the officer that he might 
not pinch the afflicted, and upon their being struck down at the sight of 
him and making their usual cries he was committed to the jail in Boston, 
where he lay fifteen weeks, and then was prevailed on by his friends to 
make his escape, and to absent himself until the consternation of the people 
was a little abated, and they had recovered their senses. 

By this time about one hundred persons were in the several prisons 44 
charged with witchcraft. The court of Oyer and Terminer began at Salem 
the first week in June [June 2d]. Only one of the accused, viz. Bridget 
Bishop, 45 alias Oliver, was brought upon trial. She had been charged with 
witchcraft twenty years before, by a person who acknowledged his guilt in 
accusing her upon his death-bed ; but being a fractious old woman the losses 
the neighbors met with in their cattle and poultry, or by oversetting their 
carts, &c, were ascribed to her, and now given in evidence. This, together 
with the hearsay from the specters sworn to in court by the afflicted and 
confessing confederates, and an excrescence found some where upon her 
which was called a teat, was thought by court and jury plenary proof, 
and she was convicted, and on the 10th of June executed. 

The court adjourned to the 30th of June, and in the mean time the Gov- 
ernor and Council desired the opinion of several ministers upon the state of 
things as they then stood, which was given as follows : — 

" The return of several ministers consulted by his excellency and the 
honourable council upon the present witchcraft in Salem village. 

Boston, June 15th, 1692. 
" 1. The afflicted state of our poor neighbours, that are now suffering 
by molestations from the invisible world, we apprehend so deplorable, that 
we think their condition calls for the utmost help of all persons in their 
several capacities. 

44 The jails of Boston and Ipswich were filled, as well as that of Salem. Many of the 
accused were heads of families ; the season for putting in crops was far advanced, and 
farm labor had been interrupted. "Upon consideration," say the records of the Council 
for May 27, 1692, " that there are many criminal offenders now in custody, some whereof 
" have lain long, apd many inconveniencies attending the thronging of the goals at this hot 
" season of the year, there being no judicatories or courts of justice yet established : Or- 
" dered, That a special commission of Oyer and Terminer be made out to William 
" Stoughton, John Richards, Nathaniel Saltonstall, Wait Winthrop, Bartholomew Gedney, 
" Samuel Sewall, John Hathorne, Jonathan Corwin and Peter Sergeant, Esquires, assign- 
" ing them to be justices, or any five of them (whereof William Stoughton, John Richards 
" and Bartholomew Gedney Esq's to be one), to inquire of, hear and determine for this 
" time, according to the law and custom of England and of this their Magesties' Province, all 
" and all manner of crimes and offences had, made, done or perpetrated within the coun- 
" ties of Suffolk, Essex, Middlesex, and each of them." Capt. Stephen Sewall was ap- 
pointed clerk, and Thomas Newton as attorney. George Corwin was the sheriff, and Geo. 
Herrick, marshal. p. 

45 The testimony and other papers, in the case of Bridget Bishop, are in Becords of Salem 
Witchcraft, Vol. i. pp. 13-5-172; Wonders of the Invisible World, pp. 65-70; and Calef's 
More Wonders, pp. 119-126. p. 



WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1692. 33 

" 2. We cannot but, with all thankfulness, acknowledge the success 
which the merciful God has given unto the sedulous and assiduous endea- 
vours of our honourable rulers, to detect the abominable witchcrafts which 
have been committed in the country, humbly praying, that the discovery of 
those mysterious and mischievous wickednesses may be perfected. 

" 3. We judge that, in the prosecution of these and all such witchcrafts, 
there is need of a very critical and exquisite caution, lest by too much cre- 
dulity for things received only upon the Devil's authority, there be a door 
opened for a long train of miserable consequences, and Satan get an advan- 
tage over us ; for we should not be ignorant of his devices. 

" 4. As in complaints upon witchcrafts, there may be matters of in- 
quiry which do not amount unto matters of presumption, and there may be 
matters of presumption which yet may not be matters of conviction, so it 
is necessary, that all proceedings thereabout be managed with an exceeding 
tenderness towards those that may be complained of, especially if they have 
been persons formerly of an unblemished reputation. 

" 5. When the first inquiry is made into the circumstances of such as 
may lie under the just suspicion of witchcrafts, we could wish that there 
may be admitted as little as is possible of such noise, company and openness 
as may too hastily expose them that are examined, and that there may 
no thing be used as a test for the trial of the suspected, the lawfulness where- 
of may be doubted among the people of God ; but that the directions given by 
such judicious writers as Perkins and Bernard [be consulted in such a case]. 

" G. Presumptions whereupon persons may be committed, and, much 
more, convictions whereupon persons may be condemned as guilty of witch- 
crafts, ought certainly to be more considerable than barely the accused 
person's being represented by a specter unto the afflicted ; inasmuch as it is 
an undoubted and notorious thing, that a demon may, by God's permission, 
appear, even to ill purposes, in the shape of an innocent, yea, and a virtu- 
ous man. Nor can we esteem alterations made in the sufferers, by a look 
or touch of the accused, to be an infallible evidence of guilt, but frequently 
liable to be abused by the Devil's legerdemains. 

" 7. We know not whether some remarkable affronts given to the Devils 
by our disbelieving those testimonies whose whole force and strength is 
from them alone, may not put a period unto the progress of the dreadful 
calamity begun upon us, in the accusations of so many persons, whereof 
some, we hope, are jet clear from the great transgression laid unto their charge. 

" 8. Nevertheless, we cannot but humbly recommend unto the govern- 
ment, the speedy and vigorous prosecution of such as have rendered them- 
selves obnoxious, according to the direction given in the laws of God, and the 
wholesome statutes of the English nation, for the detection of witchcrafts." 46 

46 Gov. Hutchinson found this document in the Postscript of Increase Mather's Cases of 
Conscience, 1693. His copy, in the early draft, is quite correct, except that the concluding 
words of the fifth section '* be consulted in such a case " were accidentally omitted. In 
6* 



J2 WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 

Herrick] and required to deliver up his sword. A further examination was 
had in the meeting house, his hands held open by the officer that he might 
not pinch the afflicted, and upon their being struck clown at the sight of 
him and making their usual cries he was committed to the jail in Boston, 
whore he lay fifteen weeks, and then was prevailed on by his friends to 
make his escape, and to absent himself until the consternation of the people 
was a little abated, and they had recovered their senses. 

By this time about one hundred persons were in the several prisons 44 
charged with witchcraft. The court of Oyer and Terminer began at Salem 
the first week in June [June 2d]. Only one of the accused, viz. Bridget 
Bishop, 43 alias Oliver, was brought upon trial. She had been charged with 
witchcraft twenty years before, by a person who acknowledged his guilt in 
accusing her upon his death-bed ; but being a fractious old woman the losses 
the neighbors met with in their cattle and poultry, or by oversetting their 
carts, &c, were ascribed to her, and now given in evidence. This, together 
with the hearsay from the specters sworn to in court by the afflicted and 
confessing confederates, and an excrescence found some where upon her 
which was called a teat, was thought by court and jury plenary proof, 
and she was convicted, and on the 10th of June executed. 

The court adjourned to the 30th of June, and in the mean time the Gov- 
ernor and Council desired the opinion of several ministers upon the state of 
things as they then stood, which was given as follows : — 

" The return of several ministers" consulted by his excellency and the 
honourable council upon the present witchcraft in Salem village. 

Boston, June 15th, 1692. 
" 1. The afflicted state of our poor neighbours, that are now suffering 
by molestations from the invisible world, we apprehend so deplorable, that 
we think their condition calls for the utmost help of all persons in their 
several capacities. 

44 The jails of Boston and Ipswich were filled, as well as that of Salem. Many of the 
accused were heads of families ; the season for putting in crops was far advanced, and 
farm labor had been interrupted. " Upon consideration," say the records of the Council 
for May 27, 1692, " that there are many criminal offenders now in custody, some whereof 
" have lain long, and many inconveniencies attending the thronging of the goals at this hot 
" season of the year, there being no judicatories or courts of justice yet established : Or- 
" dered, That a special commission of Oyer and Terminer be made out to William 
" Stoughton, John Richards, Nathaniel Saltonstall, Wait Winthrop, Bartholomew Gedney, 
" Samuel Sewall, John Hathorne, Jonathan Corwin and Peter Sergeant, Esquires, assign- 
" ing them to be justices, or any five of them (whereof William Stoughton, John Richards 
" and Bartholomew Gedney Esq's to be one), to inquire of, hear and determine for this 
" time, according to the law and custom of England and of this their Magesties' Province, all 
" and all manner of crimes and offences had, made, done or perpetrated within the coun- 
" ties of Suffolk, Essex, Middlesex, and each of them." Capt. Stephen Sewall was ap- 
pointed clerk, and Thomas Newton as attorney. George Corwin was the sheriff, and Geo. 
HeiTick, marshal. p. 

45 The testimony and other papers, in the case of Bridget Bishop, are in Records of Salem 
Witchcraft, Vol. i. pp. 135-172; Wonders of the Invisible World, pp. 65-70; and Calef's 
More Wonders, pp. 119-126. p. 



WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 33 

" 2. We cannot but, with all thankfulness, acknowledge the success 
which the merciful God has given unto the sedulous and assiduous endea- 
vours of our honourable rulers, to detect the abominable witchcrafts which 
have been committed in the country, humbly praying, that the discovery of 
those mysterious and mischievous wickednesses may be perfected. 

" 3. We judge that, in the prosecution of these and all such witchcrafts, 
there is need of a very critical and exquisite caution, lest by too much cre- 
dulity for things received only upon the Devil's authority, there be a door 
opened for a long train of miserable consequences, and Satan get an advan- 
tage over us ; for we should not be ignorant of his devices. 

" 4. As in complaints upon witchcrafts, there may be matters of in- 
quiry which do not amount unto matters of presumption, and there may be 
matters of presumption which yet may not be matters of conviction, so it 
is necessary, that all proceedings thereabout be managed with an exceeding 
tenderness towards those that may be complained of, especially if they have 
been persons formerly of an unblemished reputation. 

" 5. When the first inquiry is made into the circumstances of such as 
may lie under the just suspicion of witchcrafts, we could wish that there 
may be admitted as little as is possible of such noise, company and openness 
as may too hastily expose them that are examined, and that there may 
no thing be used as a test for the trial of the suspected, the lawfulness where- 
of may be doubted among the people of God ; but that the directions given by 
such judicious writers as Perkins and Bernard [be consulted in such a case]. 

" G. Presumptions whereupon persons may be committed, and, much 
more, convictions whereupon persons may be condemned as guilty of witch- 
crafts, ought certainly to be more considerable than barely the accused 
person's being represented by a specter unto the afflicted ; inasmuch as it is 
an undoubted and notorious tiling, that a demon may, by God's permission, 
appear, even to ill purposes, in the shape of an innocent, yea, and a virtu- 
ous man. Nor can we esteem alterations made in the sutferers, by a look 
or touch of the accused, to be an infallible evidence of guilt, but frequently 
liable to be abused by the Devil's legerdemains. 

" 7. We know not whether some remarkable affronts given to the Devils 
by our disbelieving those testimonies whose whole force and strength is 
from them alone, may not put a period unto the progress of the dreadful 
calamity begun upon us, in the accusations of so many persons, whereof 
some, we hope, are yet clear from the great transgression laid unto their charge. 

" 8. Nevertheless, we cannot but humbly recommend unto the govern- 
ment, the speedy and vigorous prosecution of such as have rendered them- 
selves obnoxious, according to the direction given in the laws of God, and the 
wholesome statutes of the English nation, for the detection of witchcrafts." 46 

46 Gov. Hutchinson found this document in the Postscript of Increase Mather's Cases of 
Conscience, 1693. His copy, in the early draft, is quite correct, except that the concluding 
words of the fifth section '" be consulted in such a case " were accidentally omitted. In 
6* 



M WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 

The two first and the last sections of this advice took away the force of all 
the others, and the prosecutions went on with more vigor than before. The 
exquisite caution in separating the evidence upon the Devil's authority from 
the rest, in the third section, and the disbelieving those testimonies whose 
whole force is from the Devil alone in the seventh section, must have 
puzzled the judges, and they had need of some further authorities to guide 
them than Perkins or Bernard, 47 or any other books they were furnished 
with. 43 

I was at a loss until I met with this return, by what law they proceeded. 
The old constitution was dissolved ; no laws of the colony were in force, 
witchcraft is no offence by the common law of England. The statute of 
James I. was indeed more ancient than the colony charter, but no statute 
had ever been adopted here. The General Assembly had not then met, 
and there could have been no provision made by a Province law, but it 
seems by the eighth section that the English statutes were made the rule 
upon this extraordinary occasion. But what authority the court had to 
change the sentence from burning to hanging, I cannot conceive. 49 Before 
the other trials the law against witchcraft under the first charter was estab- 
lished with the other Colony laws. The authority by which the court sat 
may as well be called in question. No authority is given by the Province 
charter to any powers short of the whole General Court to constitute courts 
of justice. The Governor indeed, with the consent of the Council, apjDoints 
judges, commissioners of Oyer and Terminer, and all officers belonging to 
the courts. It is strange they did not tarry until the Assembly met. A 
judge shall not be punished for mere error of judgment, but it certainly 

making his final draft lie probably noticed that the sentence was incomplete, and instead of 
recurring to the original authority, supplied words of his own : " may be observed." This, 
and similar facts, show that he made little use of original authorities in preparing his final 
draft. In his last copy of this document, and in printing, ten errors were made" in words 
and transpositions, but one of which appear in the early draft. The most important error 
was defeat for detect in the second section. p. 

47 Richard Bernard, 1566-1651, a famous Puritan minister at Batcomb in Somerset. 
His Guide to Grand Jury -men in cases of Witchcraft (London, 1627), says Increase Mather, 
" is a solid and wise treatise. As for the judgment of the elders in New-England, so far as 
" I can learn, they do generally concur with Mr. Perkins and Mr. Bernard." (Cases of Con- 
science, pp. 252-3, ed. 1862.) " p. 

48 Gov. Hutchinson omitted this paragraph w hen he prepared his next and final draft, which 
was a judicious proceeding. The above is a view of the document which may occur to 
a reader on a first and superficial examination ; and it has been claimed by a late writer 
that " the paper is so worded as to mislead." The paper was drawn by Cotton Mather; 
and was " concurringly presented before his Excellency and Council by twelve ministers " 
of Boston and the vicinity. (Cases of Conscience, Postscript.) Those twelve men 
knew the meaning of language ; and it is hardly possible to believe that they would concur, 
at that solemn period, in a series of recommendations to the public authorities which carried 
a contradiction, if not a fraud, on the face of the document. Hutchinson's omission of the 
passage may be regarded as a retraction of his first impressions, resulting from further in- 
vestigation. The advice, in my opinion, is wholly consistent ; but this is not the place to 
discuss the point. I purpose to do this on some other occasion. p. 

49 This statement shows that Hutchinson had not seen the records of the Council, a copy 
of which was made in the British State Paper office in 1816, and is now in the office of the 
Secretary of the State of Massachusetts. p. 



WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1692. 35 

behooves him, in a trial for life especially, to consider well by what authority 
he acts. 

The court was held again by adjournment at Salem, June 30. Six [five] 
women were brought upon trial, Sarah Good, Rebecca Nurse, Susannah 
Martin, Elizabeth Howe, and Sarah Wildes. 50 The court and jury seemed 
to have had no difficulty with any but Nurse. She was a church member, 
and probably her good character caused the jury to bring in a verdict not 
guilty ; but the accusers making a very great clamor and the court express- 
ing their dissatisfaction with the verdict, the jury desired to go out again, 
and then brought her in guilty. The foreman of the jury gave the follow- 
ing certificate to satisfy her relations what induced an alteration of the 
verdict. 

"July 4th, 1G92. 

" I Thomas Fisk, the subscriber hereof, being one of them that were of 
the jury the last week at Salem court, upon the trial of Rebekah Nurse, 
&c. being desired, by some of the relations, to give a reason why the jury 
brought her in guilty, after the verdict not guilty; I do hereby give my 
reasons to be as follows, viz. : 

" When the verdict, not guilty, was [given], the honoured court was pleased 
to object against it, saying to them, that they think they let slip the words 
which the prisoner at the bar spake against herself, which were spoken in 
reply to Goodwife Ilobbs and her daughter, who had been faulty in setting 
their hands to the Devil's book, as they had confessed formerly ; the words 
were, ' What do these persons give in evidence against me now ? they used 
to come among us ? ' After the honoured court had manifested their dis- 
satisfaction of the verdict, several of the jury declared themselves desirous 
to go out again, and thereupon the honoured court gave leave; but when 
we came to consider the case, I could not tell how to take her words as an 
evidence against her, till she had a further opportunity to put her sense upon 
them, if she would take it ; and then going into court, I mentioned the 
words aforesaid, which by one of the court were affirmed to have been 
spoken by her, she being then at the bar, but made no reply nor interpre- 
tation of them ; whereupon, these words were to me a principal evidence 
against her. Thomas Fisk." 

Nurse, being informed of the use which had been made of her words, 
gave in a declaration to the court, that " when she said Hobbs and her 
daughter were of her company, she meant no more than that they were 
prisoners as well as herself; and that, being hard of hearing, she did not 
know what the foreman of the jury said." But her declaration had no effect. 

50 Erroneously printed " Wilder." The trials of Susannah Martin and Elizabeth How 
are in Records of Salem Witchcraft, vol. i. 193-21o, and vol. ii. pp. 69-93 ; Mather's Won- 
ders, pp. 70-80, and, with the trials of Bishop, Burroughs and Carrier, were copied by 
Calef, pp. 114-139. p. 



2,6 WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 

The minister of Salem Mr. [Nicholas] Noyes was over zealous in these 
prosecutions. lie excommunicated this honest old woman after her condem- 
nation. One part of the form seems to have been unnecessary, delivering 
her over to Satan. He supposed she had delivered herself up to him long 
before. But her life and conversation had been such, of which many testi- 
monies were given, that the remembrance of it, as soon as the people re- 
turned to the use of their reason, must have wiped off all the reproach which 
had been occasioned by the manner of her death. 

Calef, who when he wrote was generally supposed to be under unreason- 
able prejudice against the country, which lessened the credit of his narrative, 
says that at the trial of Sarah Good, one of the afflicted fell into a fit, and after 
recovery cried out that the prisoner had stabbed her and broke the knife in 
doing it, and a piece of the knife was found upon the afflicted person ; but 
a young man declared that the day before he broke that very knife and 
threw away a piece of it, this afflicted person being then present ; and adds 
that the court bid her tell no more lies, but went on notwithstanding this 
fraud to improve her as a witness against other prisoners.* This ac- 
count, if true, would give me a more unfavorable opinion even of the integri- 
ty of the court, if I had not met with something not unlike to it in the trials be- 
fore Sir Matthew Hale. The afflicted children in their fits upon the least touch 
from Rose Cullender, one of the supposed witches, would shriek out, which 
they would not do when touched by any other person. Lest there should be 
any fraud, Lord Cornwallis, Sir Edmund Bacon, Sergeant Keeling and other 
gentlemen attended one of the girls whilst she was in her fits at another part 
of the hall, and one of the witches was brought, and an apron put before the 
girl's eyes, but instead of the witch's hand another person's hand was taken 
to touch the girl, who thereupon shrieked out as she used to do. The gen- 
tlemen returned and declared to the court they believed the whole was an 
imposture. The witch was found guilty notwithstanding, and the judge 
and all the court were fully satisfied with the verdict and awarded sentence 
accordingly. 

Susannah Martin had been suspected, ever since 1669, so that a great 
number of witch stories were told of her, and many of them given in evi- 
dence. One of the other being told by the minister at the place of execu- 
tion, that he knew she was a witch, and therefore advised her to confess, she 
replied that he lied, and that she was no more a witch than he was a wizard, 
and if he took away her life, God would give him blood to drink. 

At one of these trials it is said that one of the accusers charged Mr. Wil- 
lard, a minister of Boston, and that she was sent out of court, and afterwards 
a report spread that she was mistaken in the person.f It is more probable 
that she intended [John] Willard, who was then in prison, and that it was 
given out that the audience were mistaken. 

At the next adjournment, Aug. 5 th, George Burroughs, John Proctor 

* Calef [p. 101]. h. f Calcf [p. 103]. h. 



WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1692. 37 

and Elizabeth his wife, John Willard, George Jacobs and Martha Carrier 
were all found guilty, condemned, and all executed the 19th of August, 
except Elizabeth Proctor, who escaped by pleading her belly. 

Burroughs had preached some years before, but it seems not to accept- 
ance, at Salem village. Afterward he preached at Wells in the Province of 
Maine. As a specimen of the proceedings in all the trials we shall be a 
little more particular in relating his. 

The indictment was as follows. 

Anno Regis et Regina?, &c. quarto. 

Essex ss. The jurors for our sovereign lord and lady the king and queen 
present, that George Burroughs, late of Falmouth in the province of Mas- 
sachusetts Bay, clerk, the ninth day of May, in the fourth year of the reign 
of our sovereign lord and lady William and Mary, by the grace of God of 
England, Scotland, France and Ireland, king and queen, defenders of the 
faith, &c. and divers other days and times, as well before as after, certain 
detestable arts called witchcrafts and sorceries, wickedly and feloniously hath 
used, practised and exercised, at and within the township of Salem, in the 
county of Essex aforesaid, in, upon and against one Mary Walcot, of Salem 
village, in the county of Essex, single woman ; by which said wicked arts, 
the said Mary Walcot, the ninth day of May in the fourth year abovesaid, 
and divers other days and times as well before as after, was and is tortured, 
afflicted, pined, consumed, wasted and tormented, against the peace of our 
sovereign lord and lady the king and queen, and against the form of the 
statute in that case made and provided. Endorsed B'dla vera. Three 
other bills were found for the like upon other persons, to all which he plead- 
ed not guilty, and put himself upon trial, &e. 

The afflicted and confessing witches were first examined, for although, by 
the advice of the elders, this kind of evidence was not to be deemed infalli- 
ble ; yet it was presumptive, and, with other circumstances, sufficient proof. 
It would be tedious to recite the whole of this evidence, especially as it was 
of the same sort with what has been already related in the confessions. The 
most material circumstance which distinguished him [Burroughs] from the 
rest, was, that he was to be a king in Satan's empire. 

The other evidence was that being a little man he had performed feats 
beyond the strength of a giant ; particularly that he would take a gun of 
seven feet barrel behind the lock and hold it out with one hand ; that he 
would take up a barrel of molasses or cider and carry them in a disadvanta- 
geous place and posture from a canoe to the shore ; and when in his vindica- 
tion he urged that an Indian which was there held out the gun as he did, the 
witnesses not seeing or not remembering any Indian, it was supposed it must 
be the black man or the devil, who, the witnesses swore, looks like an Indian. 

Besides this it was sworn that he had treated his wives, having been twice 
married, very harshly, and would pretend, when he had been absent from 
1 



3S WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 

home, that lie could tell what had been said to them, and that he persuaded 
them to swear, and to oblige themselves by a writing, which in the printed 
account of the trial is called "a Covenant," not to reveal his secrets, and 
that they had privately complained to the neighbors that their house was 
haunted by spirits. One of his wife's brothers also swore that going out 
after strawberries they rode very softly — slowly, I suppose — two or three 
miles, when Burroughs went into the bushes, after which they rode back a 
quick pace, and when they came near home, to their astonishment found him 
on foot with them, and that he fell to chiding his wife for talking with her 
brother about him, and said he knew their thoughts, which his brother inti- 
mated was more than the Devil knew, but Burroughs replied his god told 
him. 

The prisoner said, in his defence, a man was with him when his brother 
left him, which was also supposed to be the black man. 

This was the sum of the evidence. He is said to have used many twistings 
and turnings, and to have contradicted himself in making his defence. At 
his execution he concluded his prayer with the Lord's prayer, probably to 
show his innocence, for it was generally received that a witch could not say 
the Lord's prayer, and it was used as a test at the examinations when several 
of the old women, as children often do, blundered at give and. forgive in the 
fourth and fifth petitions, and it was improved against them. 

September 9th, Martha Corey. Mary Esty, Alice Parker, Ann Pudcator, 
Dorcas Hoar and Mary Bradbury were tried; and Sept. 17 Margaret Scott, 
Wilmot Read, Samuel Wardwell, Mary Parker, Abigail Faulkner, Rebekah 
Eames, Mary Lacey, Ann Foster, Abigail Hobbs, and all received sentence 
of death. Those in italics were executed September 22d. 

Mary Esty, who was sister to Nurse, put into the court a petition in which 
she tells them that, although she was conscious of her own innocence, yet 
she did not ask her own life, but prayed them before they condemned any 
more they would examine some of the confessing witches, who she knew had 
belied themselves and others, which she was sure would appear in the world 
to which she was going, if it did not in this world. 

Those that were not executed probably confessed their guilt. All whose 
examinations remain on the files, of which there are three or four, did so. 
Wardwell had confessed, but recanted and suffered. His own wife, as well 
as his daughter, accused him and saved themselves. There are a great num- 
ber of instances of children and parents accusing each other. I have met 
with no other than this of husbands or wives, and surely this one ought not 
to have been suffered. 

Giles Corey was the only person, besides what have been named, who suf- 
fered death. He, seeing the fate of those who had put themselves upon trial. 
refused to plead to the indictment ; but the judges who were not careful 
enough in observing the rules of law in favor of the prisoners, took care to 
do it against this unhappy man, and he was pressed to death ; the only in- 



WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 39 

stance I have ever heard of in any of the English colonies. 61 History fur- 
nishes us perhaps with as many instances of cruelty proceeding from super- 
stition, as from the most savage barbarous temper of mind. 

Besides the irregularities which I have already mentioned in these trials, 
the court admitted evidence to be given of facts, not laid in the indictments, 
to prove witchcraft eight, ten or fifteen years before; indeed, no other sort 
of evidence was offered to prove facts in the indictments but the spectral 
evidence, which, in the opinion of the divines, was not sufficient. It would 
have been well if they had consulted lawyers 52 also, who would have told 

51 Samuel Sewall, one of tbe judges in the witchcraft trials, made, on this occasion, the 
following entry in his Diary — for the use of which I am indebted to the courtesy of the 
Massachusetts Historical Society: " Monday, Sept. 19, 1692. About noon, at Salem, Giles 
" Corey was pressed to death for standing inure; much pains was used with him two days, 
" one after another, by the court and Capt. Gardner of Nantucket, who had been his 
" acquaintance; but all in vain. Sept. 20. Now I hear from Salem, that about eighteen 
" years ago, he was suspected to have stamped and pressed a man to death ; but was cleared. 
" Twas not remembered till Atin Putnam was told of it by said Corey's specter, the sab- 
" bath-day night before the execution." 

The following touching relation of the sufferings of the Corey family during the year 
1692, is in Mass. Archives, vol. cxxxv. fol. 161. For the purpose of preserving the quaint- 
ness of the original document, I have copied it verbatim. 

" To the Honrable Commite Apointed by the Generall Court to make enquire with Res- 
" pect to the Suferings in The year 1692 &C 

'■ these are to giue you a Short Acount of our Sorrows and Suferings which was in the yere 
" 1692 Some time in march our honerd father and mother Giles Corey & martha his wife 
" ware acused for Snposed wichcraft and imprisoned and ware Rcmoued from on prison to 
" another as from Salem to ipswitch & from ipswitch to boston and from boston to Salem 
" againc and soc remained in close imprisonment about four months we ware att the whole 
" Charge of their maintaiiiauce which was very chargable and soc much the more being soc 
" fair adistant from us as also I >y Reason of soe many remoues in all which we could doe not 
" Less then Acompanie them winch further added both to our trouble and Charge and al- 
" though that was very (beat in the least of our greavenceor cause of These lines but that 
" which breakes our harts and for which wee goe mourning still is that our father was put to 
" soe cruel! a death as being prest to death our mother was put to death also though in 
" another way And we Cannot Sufiiciantly exspress our Griffe for the loss of our father and 
" mother in such away Soe we Cannot Compute our exspences and coast but shall Comite 
" to your wisdomc to iudge of but after our fathers death the Shirfe thretend to size our 
" fathers estate and for bare tharof we Complied with him and paid him eleauen pound six 
" shillings in monie by which we have bee[nj grcaty damnified & iinpouerishd by being ex- 
" sposed to sell Creature and other things for litle more then half the worth of them to get the 
" monie to pay as aforesd and to maintain our father & mother in prison but that which is 
" gricucous to us is that wee are not only impouerished but also Reproached and soe may bee 
" for all generatians and that wrongfully tow unless something bee done fore the remoueall 
" thearof all which we humbly Committe to the honarablc Court Praying God to direct to 
" that which may be axceptable in his Sight and for the good of this land 
" September the 13th 1710 Wee Subscrib 3 r our humbl Searuants in all 

" Christian obedeance 
" We Cannot Judge our necessary Expense John Moulton who mared Elizabeth Corey 
" to be less than Ten pounds daughtr of the abovesd in the behalf of the 

" reast of that familie " p. 

52 The author has already stated that the court chiefly relied on the decisions of Sir Mat- 
thew Hale, and " the authorities of Keble, Dalton and other lawyers of note who lay down 
'* rules of conviction as absurd as any ever adopted in New-England." These illegal methods 
of procedure the judges certainly did not receive from thedergy, or from Perkins and 
Bernard, the clerical authoritiesrecommended to them. Lord Campbell brings similar 
charges against Sir Matthew Hale, in connection with the Bury St. Edmund's trial. He 

7* 



40 WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 

them that evidence ought not to be admitted even against the general char- 
acter of persons charged criminally unless they offer evidence in favor of 
it, much less ought their whole lives to be arraigned and no opportunity 
given them of making defence. 

This court of Oyer and Terminer, happily for the country, sat no more. 
Nineteen persons had been executed ; but the eyes of the country in general 
were not yet opened. The prison at Salem was so full that some were 
obliged to be removed, and many were in other prisons reserved for trial. 
Th e General Court which sat in October, although they had revived the 
old colony law which was in these words, " If any man or woman be a 
witch, that is, hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit, they shall be put to 
death " — yet this not being explicit enough, they enacted another in the 
words of the statute of King James, which continued in force until the 
trials were over, but both were afterwards disallowed by the crown. 63 
Another act was passed, constituting a Supreme Court, 54 which was to be 
held at Salem in January ; but before that time many who had been forward 
in these prosecutions became sensible of their error. Time for considera- 
tion seems to be reason enough to be assigned for it ; but another reason 
has been given. Ordinarily persons of the lowest rank, the dregs of the 
people, have had the misfortune of being charged with witchcraft ; and 
although this was the case in many instances here, yet there were a num- 
ber of women of as reputable families as any in the towns where they 
lived, who were charged and imprisoned, and several persons of still supe- 
rior rank were hinted at by the pretended bewitched or the confessing 

says, " he violated the plainest rules of justice, and really was the murderer of two inno- 

" cent women I would very readily have pardoned him for an undoubted belief in 

" witchcraft, and I should have considered that this belief detracted little from his charac- 

" ter for discernment and humanity There not only was no evidence again>t them 

" which ought to have weighed in the mind of any reasonable man who believed in witch- 
" craft ; but during the trial the imposture practiced by the prosecutors was detected and 
" exposed. The enormous violation of justice then perpetrated has become more revolting 
" as the mists of ignorance, which partly covered it, have been dispersed." {Lives of the 
Chief Justices, vol. i. p. 561, 563.) p. 

53 The colony law against witchcraft was re-enacted October 29, 1692. The statute of King 
James I. was passed December 14, and published two days later. Both were disallowed by 
the Privy Council, Aug. 22, 1695; the latter for " being not found to agree with the statute 
" of King James I., whereby the dower is saved to the widow, and the inheritance to the 
" heir of the party convicted." {Province Laics, 1869, vol. i. pp. 55, 91.) p. 

54 The law was passed Nov. 25. December 7, William Stoughton was elected chief justice 
(receiving every vote present), and Thomas Danforth, John Richards, Wait Winthrop and 
Samuel Sewall, receiving only majorities as associate judges. December 22, they received 
their commissions. 

Gov. Hutchinson states that the colony law against witchcraft was revived by the first 
act of the Provincial Assembly, passed June 15, and published June 28, 1692, providing 
" That all the local laws of Massachusetts Bay and New Plymouth, being not repugnant to 
" the laws of England, do remain in full force, until the 10 clay 0/ November next." As 
the charges alleged in the witchcraft trials were committed, and proceedings instituted, be- 
fore June 28, and the special court was instructed, May 27, to proceed under English' law 
and custom, it is probable that the court tried and executed every one of its victims under 
English law, the statute of James I. Trials were held after the old colony law was re- 
enacted ; but no persons were executed after September 22, 1692. p. 



WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 41 

witches. The latter had no other way of saving themselves. Some of the 
persons were publicly named. Dudley Bradstreet, a justice of the peace, 
who had been appointed one of President Dudley's council, thought it neces- 
sary to abscond ; so did his brother John Bradstreet, sons of the late Gov- 
ernor Bradstreet. Calef says it was intimated that Sir William Phips's lady 
was accused. 65 One at Boston complained of being afflicted by the secretary 
of Connecticut colony .* 

At the Superior Court held at Salem in January, the grand jury found 
bills against about fifty persons, all but one or two women, who either were 
in prison, or under bonds for their appearance. They were all but three 
acquitted by the petty jury, and those three were pardoned by the Gover- 
nor. Divers others were brought upon trial soon after at Charlestown in 
the county of Middlesex, and all acquitted. The juries changed sooner 
than the judges. The opinion which the latter had of their own superior 
understanding and judgment probabl} r made them more backward in own- 
ing or discovering their errors. One of them, however, Mr. Sewall, who 
always had the character of great integrity, at a public fast sometime after 
gave in a bill, or note, to the minister, acknowledging his errors and desir- 
ing to humble himself in the sight of God and his people, and stood up 
while the note was reading. 56 It is said that the chief justice Mr. Stough- 

65 Nathaniel Saltonstall, of Haverhill, was also under suspicion. Judge Sewall, March 
3, 1692-3, wrote to him a letter expressing disbelief in such reports, and sympathy for him 
and his family. The letter is in Judge Sewall's Diary under that date. p. 

* " As to what you mention, concerning that poor creature in your town that is afflicted, 
and mentioned my name to yourself and son, I return you hearty thanks for your intima- 
tion about it, and for your charity therein mentioned; and I have great cause to bless God, 
who, of his mercy hitherto, hath not left me to fall into such an horrid evil." Extract from 
letter [of Secretary Allen] to I. Mather, Hartford, 18 March, 92 [-3 |. H. 

56 It is singular that Gov. Hutchinson did not give the date of this confession, which is 
noted in Calef. In this manuscript he says, "sometime after." In the final draft he says, 
" it was not long before one of the judges was sensible of his error." The confession was 
made January 14, 1696-7, nearly live years after the error was committed to which 
he alludes. Up to this time, he gave little or no evidence of contrition in his Diary. 
He was now under deep domestic affliction. Of his thirteen children he had lost eight. 
On the 25th of December, 1696, he buried his little Sarah, two years old, and on the 22d of 
May previous an infant son. His Diary shows that his mind was in a state of abject 
despondency. After the religious type of the period he regarded these repeated strokes 
of Divine Providence as brought upon him by his own unworthiness. On the 11th of 
January, three da} r s before the appointed fast, he writes, " God helped me to pray more 
" than ordinarily, that he would make up our loss in the burial of our little daughter and 
" other children, and that [he] would give us a child to serve him, pleading with him as 
" the institutor of marriage, and the author of every good work." k 

Calef (p. 144) gives an abstract from memory of Judge Sewall's confession; and Dr. 
Abiel Holmes, who had seen the Diary, gives, in American Annals (vol. ii. p. 9), a brief ex- 
tract. The following, copied, by permission, from Ins original Diary now in possession of 
the Massachusetts Historical Society, is the paper entire: 

" Copy of the Bill I put up on the Fast Day, giving it to Mr. Willard as he 
N. B. " passed by, and standing up at the reading of it, and bowing when finished, in 

Bill " the afternoon. 

put tip " Samuel Sewall, sensible of the reiterated strokes of God upon himself and 

at Fast. " family ; and being sensible, that as to the guilt contracted upon the opening of the 

" late Commission of Oyer and Terminer, at Salem (to which the order of this day 

u relates), he is, upon many accounts, more concerned than any that he knows of, desires 



$2 WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 

ton being informed of this act of one of his brethren, remarked upon it, 
that for himself, when he sat in judgment he had the fear of God before 
his eyes, and gave his opinion according to the best of his understanding, 
and although it might appear afterwards that he had been in an error, he 
saw no necessity of a public acknowledgment of it. One of the ministers, 

" to take the blame and shame of it; asking pardon of men, and especially desiring prayers 
" that God, who has an unlimited authority, would pardon that sin, and all other his sins, 
" personal and relative : and according to his infinite benignity and sovereignty, not visit 
" the sin of him, or of any other, upon himself or any of his, nor upon the land: but that 
"he would powerfully defend him against all temptations to sin, for the future; and 
" vouchsafe him the efficacious, saving conduct of his word and spirit." 

The following entry is the first indication I find in his diary, of sensitiveness or com- 
punction for the part he took in the witchcraft trials. It was made December 24, 1698, 
while his little Sarah lay dead in his house : " Sam [his son] recites to me, in Latin, Mat- 
" thew xii. from the 6th to the end of the 12th verse. The 7th verse [Quod si nossetis quid 
" sit, misericordiam volo, et non sacrificium, non condemnassetis inculpabiles] did awfully 
" bring to mind the Salem tragedy." 

The entire confession of Judge Sewall, its date and attending circumstances, will correct 
erroneous impressions concerning it. The subject matter confessed covers but one point : 
" the guilt contracted upon the opening of the late commission of Oyer and Terminer at 
" Salem." The court was opened June 2, 1692. We cannot be in doubt as to the nature of 
the guilt then contracted. It was the adoption of a rule of the court, by which the records 
made, and depositions received, at the preliminary examinations (which consisted almost 
wholly of spectral evidence), were introduced, sworn to, and received as legal testimony in 
the trials of the accused. Out of this rule, which was wholly illegal, grew all the fatal re- 
sults of the Salem trials. Judge Sewall was a parishioner of Samuel Willard, of the Old 
South Church in Boston, who regarded such evidence as the " Devil's testimony"; and 
whose judicious conduct during the trials is worthy of the highest commendation. "He was 
the intimate friend of Increase and Cotton Mather, who both held similar views. Three 
days before (March 31), Cotton Mather had written to John Richards, one of the judges, 
cautioning him against the use of spectral testimony. The letter, although addressed to 
his own parishioner, was doubtless intended for, and considered by, the whole court, and 
is called, by himself and his son, the " letter to the judges." The letter says : " If man- 
" kind have thus far once consented unto the credit of diabolical representations, the door 
" is opened for the devils to obtain, from the courts in the invisible world, a license to pro- 
" ceed unto most hideous desolations upon the repute and repose of such as have been kept 
" from the great transgression. Perhaps there are wise and good men, that may be ready 
" to style him that shall advance this caution, a witch advocate ; but, in the winding up, 
" this caution will certainly be wished for." (Mass. Soc.'s Hist. Coll., xxxviii. p. 393.) In 
the face of such influences and associations Judge Sewall gave his voice in the court for 
legalizing spectral testimony ! 

But for his confession we might never have known the position of Judge Sewall on the 
matter of spectral evidence, then the great question of debate in the Province ; or have 
surmised the position of his three Boston associates, Richards, Winthrop and Sergeant. 
Saltonstall, living in Haverhill, did not attend the sittings of the court. The views of chief 
justice Stoughton in favor of admitting spectral testimony are well known ; and those of 
the three Salem members of the commission, Hathorne, Corwin and Gedney, we have before 
us in the records of their examinations, than which nothing more atrocious can be imagined. 
If the four Boston members had stood out against the views of Stoughton and the Salem 
members, there had been a tie in the commission. Judge Sewall says, that, in the guilt 
contracted, " he is, upon many accounts, more concerned than any that he knows of." 
How can this be ? Was it a morbid utterance of his desponding mind ; or has it an his- 
torical significance ? He was not at the head of the court, nor its most influential member. 
Nothing appears to show that he was zealous, as Stoughton was, on this point. The remark- 
would be explained, if he alone, of the Boston judges, went over to Stoughtou's views ; and, 
by a majority vote, fixed the policy of the court. I know of no evidence outside the con- 
fession to sustain this hypothesis; and it is here thrown out onlv for the purpose of elicit- 
ing further information as to the position of the other three Boston judges. Brattle inti- 
mates that the members of the court were not a unit in their views. He says, " But although 



WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1 692. 43 

who in the time of it approved of the court's proceeding, remarked in his 
diary soon after that many were of opinion innocent blood had been shed. 
The afflicted were never brought to trial for their imposture. Many of 
them are said to have proved profligate, abandoned people, and others to 
have passed the remainder of their lives in a state of obscurity and 
contempt. 67 

" the chief judge and some of the other judges be very zealous in these proceedings," &c. 
I have seen no evidence that Richards, Winthrop, or Sergeant, after the policy of the court 
was fixed, did not sustain the action of their associates. The two theories respecting dia- 
bolical agency, which were then the subject of debate, I have treated at some length in 
North American Review, vol. cviii. pp. 337-397. p. 

57 October 17, 1711, the General Court passed an act reversing " the several convictions, 
" judgments, and attainders against the " persons executed, and several who were con- 
demned but not executed, and declaring that to be null and void. In December of the 
same year, £578. 12s. were appropriated to pay the damages sustained by persons prose- 
cuted for witchcraft in 1692. The act reversing the attainder shows that the popular be- 
lief in the diabolical nature of the witchcraft troubles had not abated twenty years after 
those events transpired. The act is in Records of Salem Witchcraft, vol. ii. pp. 216-218. It 
commences thus: " Forasmuch as in the year of our Lord 1692, two several towns within 
" this Province were infested with a horrible witchcraft, or possession of devils," &c. " The 
" influence and energy of the evil spirits so great at that time acting in and upon those who 
" were the principal accusers and witnesses; " and that " some of the principal accusers 
" and witnesses in those dark and severe prosecutions have since discovered themselves to 
" be persons of profligate and vicious conversation " — were the reasons assigned for the re- 
versal of the attainder. 

As showing Gov. Hutchinson's latest opinions on the question, whether the manifesta- 
tions at Salem village were wholly the result of fraud and imposture, I append a supple- 
mentary paragraph with which he closes the narrative in his final draft. 

" The opinion which prevailed in New-England for many years after this traged}', that there 
" was something preternatural in it, and that it was not all the effect of fraud and imposture, 
" proceeded from the reluctance in human nature to reject errors once imbibed. As the 
" principal actors went off the stage this opinion was gradually lessened; but perhaps it 
" was owing to a respect to the memory of their immediate ancestor, that many do not 
" seem to be fully convinced. There arc a great number of persons who are willing to sup- 
" pose the accusers to have been under bodily disorders which affected their imaginations. 
" This is kind and charitable, but seems to be winking the truth out of sight. A little at- 
" tention must force conviction that the whole was a scene of fraud and imposture begun 
" by young girls, who at first, perhaps, thought of nothing more than being pitied and in- 
" dulgcd, and continued by adult persons who were afraid of being accused themselves. 
" The one and the other, rather than confess their fraud, suffered the lives of so many in- 
" nocents to be taken away through the credulity of judges and juries." * p. 

Erratum. — The reference, in the text, to Note 49, should have been placed after the 
word " proceeded," at the end of the first sentence of the paragraph. p. 



THE 



WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1692 



BY GOV. THOMAS HUTCHINSON 



From an Unpublished Manuscript (an early Draft of his History of 
Massachusetts) in the Massachusetts Archives 



WITH NOTES BY 

WILLIAM FREDERICK POOLE 



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